The Marauders and the Random Adventure
by fred the gnome
Summary: Weird stuff happens when you don't have a face. The Marauders and some OCs go on a beautifully random psycho adventure. I recommend this story in small doses. First few chapters have been revised.
1. The Exposition of Enlightenment

It was the first day of school at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry for our four young wizards.

Okay, so it was the first day for the seventh time. James Potter, Remus Lupin, Sirius Black, and Peter Pettigrew were all about to begin their seventh year at Hogwarts.

Each felt differently about this.

Remus was happy: he liked school. Why, no one knows.

Sirius was ecstatic. He did not share Remus's love of lessons; however, he welcomed the opportunity to escape from the dark and gloomy house of Black. _Toujours pur_ my butt.

Peter was, predictably, nervous about returning to school. This was evident in the way that he was twitching violently and wiggling his butt for lack of a tail. Fortunately for him, the little bastard knew he could count on the protection of his friends.

James was happy to return because he would get to see Lily. Pathetic, really, but he couldn't help it.

Peter was the first to wake up that first day of school. He skittered over to James' bedside and said falteringly, "Hey…hey, James…it's…time to get up…"

James charmingly replied with a slurred "Gawperimtrynasep. Nurnoyng." Translated, this means, "Go away, Peter. I'm trying to sleep. You're annoying."

However, Peter's long list of talents did not include translating the speech of half-awake morons, so he continued talking at James.

You should understand that James Potter in the morning is something you never want to see unless you are suicidal, or unless you know a good shock therapist. Let me give you a little idea: His hair was extremely messy. And I don't mean messy like he just got off of a broomstick.

No.

James' morning hair looked like James had, immediately following a wrestling match with Severus Snape, stuck a fork in an electrical outlet, and then walked into a tornado. After walking into the tornado, James had run around attacking former MI6 agents at zoos and getting tasered. Finally he had entered the small cage of a starving tiger with anger management problems. Metaphorically, of course.

…And this was just the hair.

Now let us move on to James' face, which was scrunched up into a tight little ball, causing Peter to wonder why James had been replaced by a fat Chinese man. This was because, as I hope has been successfully conveyed, James was not a morning person. Repeat: NOT a morning person.

Clearly this was _not _a pretty sight. So when James finally detached his face from the bed, Peter gasped, wiggled his butt, and shrieked. Then he ran as hastily as his short legs could take him (not actually that fast).

Remus awoke at this commotion. He yawned and said, "Bloody hell—what are you doing? Peter, James, what—AAAUGH! JAMES! I mean, James, why, hello, you look…er…interesting this morning…heh…"

James sent him a nasty look, but you couldn't actually tell.

Remus grinned and told Peter to wake Sirius. Peter tried, but Sirius merely yelled "GIVE ME BACK MY PANTS" and rolled over.

Peter obliged. Just kidding—Sirius wasn't wearing pants in the first place.

Quickly growing weary of the nonsense (and influenced mightily by his growling stomach), Remus said curtly, "Come on, Peter, just jump on him if you must."

Taking Remus at his word, as ever, Peter pounced, truly catlike, if you have a cat that makes a running start for the bed and then flies off the other side and gets a concussion. This did wake Sirius, so it was worth whatever brain trauma may have resulted.

After several minutes more of extracting themselves from their respective beds (no man-on-man action in this fic, sorry), the Marauders four walked nonchalantly down the stairs. They would have, anyway, had there not been Vaseline smeared thickly on every step.

Laughter floated up from the common room as they careened haplessly toward it. Their arrival there was less than graceful: Remus, Peter, and James tripped into basins that had been conveniently placed at the bottom of the stairs, but Sirius kept going and flew straight into a girl who had been inconveniently placed in his path.

He started to apologize, but then realized who it was and stopped. "Ha!" he exclaimed, laughing, and helped her up. "I'm NOT sorry!"

The girl, a fellow Gryffindor, fell into laughter with him. "You're just jealous because we won this round," she teased.

"Just wait until next time," he replied merrily.

"Are you OK?" a second girl asked her.

"You're fine, look, we got a picture!" piped up a third happily.

"Right when Sirius and you collided," chuckled the fourth.

I believe some introductions are necessary. These four girls were, in the true Gryffindor tradition, good students with a seriously mischievous streak. They are also close freidns of the Marauders and four of the main characters of the story. Now for various expository details:

Mary, the first girl, was blonde, and the most athletic of her four friends. She had been a member of the Gryffindor Quidditch team since her third year, and prided herself on the fact that she was one of the only female Beaters to have played at Hogwarts. Her attention span could occasionally be lacking, but her friends understood and endearingly made fun of her. She wanted to be an Auror.

Liz, the second girl, was also blonde, but she was rather more musically inclined than Mary was. She led the school Glee Club and wanted to teach, but not before traveling to China and studying gnome populations there. Her leadership position certainly did not prevent her from running round the school at 2:45 a.m. planting Dungbombs in corridors.

The third girl's name was Christian. She was, like Liz, a dedicated musician, and she competed for the top spot in Herbology with one Frank Longbottom. (Currently she was winning; she had been for some time now, in the end Frank just didn't understand plants like she did.) She read more books than Levar Burton, and still managed to find plenty of time for organizing and executing practical jokes with her friends.

Allison, the fourth, was, like two of her friends, a talented musician. (I guess Mary is just a loser.) She liked to read too, and she had pretty much decided that after graduation she wanted to travel round the world to study ancient runes, maybe write some books, definitely publish her research papers. Allison was the dedicated secretary of the school Charms Club.

SO………………………

You may have been able to deduce this yourself (congratulations, smarty pants), but the lovely ladies were fully engaged in a prank war of sorts with their Marauding friends. At the moment they were on their way to the Great Hall with the boys, naturally discussing that prank which had taken place five minutes ago.

"Vaseline is so _primitive_, though," Sirius expounded. "I mean, it's not magical at all."

"Which is precisely why the idea to use it was so ingenious," Allison said. "We think outside the box."

The argument continued all the way down the corridor and into the Great Hall.


	2. Clouds: A Poof of Magic

**I own Mary, Christian, Liz, Allison, and a few gnomes. Other than that I own nothing.**

Breakfast was uneventful, except that Sirius traumatized a first year by making a giant pancake leap to and fro around her. But hey, there are more upsetting things in life (such as James in the morning, and George Bush winning the election).

After that, the eight of them went to their first class for the day, Herbology, unfortunately with the Slytherins. That day, Professor Sprout taught them about Spoutweed, which was a mildly harmful weed commonly found in wizard's gardens. If certain spots on the plant were touched, the weed spewed copious amounts of sulfurous-smelling liquid everywhere. The Gryffindor class got a laugh when Lucius Malfoy carelessly poked one and received a load of the smelly juice for his trouble.

After that was Transfiguration. The students were learning a spell to change a flowerpot into a snail. Of the four Marauders, Remus was the only one to get it completely right, though Peter was close. The only imperfection with his was the fact that the snail's shell was made of dried clay, like the pot. James' turned out looking like an armadillo, but with eyes like a snail's. All Sirius managed to do was make his explode. The girls fared well: better than Sirius, at least.

Then came Divination with Hufflepuff. Sitting on giant pillows in the heavily perfumed room made it very hard to concentrate. James was drifting off…Oh well, he thought lazily. It doesn't matter…all we're talking about is…is…zzzzzz…

"Ja-aaames," someone said in a sing-songey voice, startling him out of sleep. "_James. JAMES!"_

"Whadappd!! _Wadadoo!_" James responded.

Again, I will translate the language of half-awake morons. James' garbled phrase means, "What happened? _What'd I do this time!_"

"James," Professor Dianra (for Trelawney was not yet employed at Hogwarts) said, "do you have any idea what we are talking about?"

"Um… divination?"

At this there was a bit of laughter throughout the room. However, it stopped immediately when Dianra gave the class the death stare that James and Sirius got so frequently.

"James," Sirius whispered. "We're talking about clouds, James… clouds…"

"Clouds," James said loudly.

"And may I ask how you know that, Mr. Potter?" Dianra hissed. "When you were snoring so loudly?"

"Well—I—was, er…divining," James improvised wildly.

"Really," Dianra said skeptically. "And what—"

"It's called—eh—_sleep divination_, Professor," Christian piped up.

"Well—" began Dianra.

"Surely you, as a divination teacher of—how many years?—would have heard of it," insisted Liz.

"But—but of course—" Dianra sputtered unconvincingly.

"Well then," said Mary, "Perhaps we should continue with the lesson, then?"

"Yes, yes—the lesson," Dianra said. Her wide, bugged out eyes traveled over everyone in the classroom, resting on James for just a few seconds longer.

All of the students got an assignment to foretell what was in their future by looking at the clouds. This had to be done every day for one month.

"What!" James said. "On the first day of school! Why, she's insane! Dianra's completely nuts! What is wrong with that woman?"

Sirius replied with a grin, "Well, James, maybe if you asked her, she'd tell you, seeing as she's right behind you."

James jumped and turned around, but Dianra was across the room helping a student with a passage in _Clouds: A Poof of Magic_. James grinned and pushed Sirius off his pouf, knocking over Mary in the process. She grinned and threw a pillow at him.

A full-out pillow fight, however, was prevented by an annoyed Hufflepuff, probably Zach Smith's dad or something.

"Excuse me," he said. "Some of us are trying to learn, here!"

"Turn around before I turn you into a girl," Sirius threatened.

The Hufflepoofter rolled his eyes. "Please. Hardly a punishment—easily reversible!"

"All right, we'll make it a punishment, a PMSing girl."

"You can't do that!" the Hufflepuff gasped, blanching.

"Bet me," Sirius said.

"Just—be quiet!" the Hufflepuff snapped, still pale, and he turned around.

"What?" James said, laughing. "Do you really know a spell for that, Padfoot?"

"Yeah. It really wasn't that hard. You know Christian, Mary, Liz, and Allison are all girls."

"Yes. I am aware of that."

"_And _they're all pretty smart."

"Yes. I am aware of that too. Your point…?"

"Well, since they're girls—"

"Yes, Sirius. They are."

"—and smart—"

"_Yes, _Sirius. By Merlin's saggy left…earlobe, GET TO THE POINT!"

"OK. They figured out an incantation. To do that."

"Are you serious? What's the spell?" James inquired incredulously.

""The spell," Sirius said, straightening up, "is _Mentrigliosa_."

"Sounds like a disease."

"It practically is one."

"Are you sure it works?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"Let's just say, I now know why girls are _so bloody awful_ every month. Cramps _suck_."

"They tested the spell on you!"

"Yeah! And it was hilarious!" said Liz.

"It wasn't that bad," said Sirius. "Anyway, being male is worse."

"Yeah, and how would you know, Sirius?"

"Hey!"

"Just kidding. Ha."

"You seriously think that being a guy is _worse_?" Christian asked. Liz whispered something to Mary, who whispered it to Christian, who whispered it to Allison.

"Fine then, we'd like to challenge you to a little bet," said Allison.

"All four of you," added Liz.

"_W__e_ —" Mary gestured to Allison, Liz, Christian and herself—"think that being female is much more difficult than being male. So we want to switch genders for a day. This Saturday. And it has to be for the _whole day_, unlike the four minutes it took last time for you to start crying and begging us to turn you back."

Remus, James and Peter raised their eyebrows at Sirius.

"Hey, I was PMSing!" said Sirius, turning red.

Christian cut in, "And Peter, please stop wiggling your butt around. It scars me emotionally."

"It's all right, we all beg each other to turn us into guys when we're PMSing. So it's settled, then. Meet us in the trophy room on the third floor on Saturday. 10 o' clock sharp!"


	3. Everyone Dies No Not Really

It was exactly 10:17 and 38 seconds on Saturday.

Liz, Allison, Mary, and Christian were all in the third floor trophy room. They had been waiting for James, Lupin, Sirius and Peter for nearly twenty minutes now, and they were getting a bit pissed off.

"Where are they?" Allison wondered aloud as she looked at her watch.

"I'm gonna kill them!" Mary expressed violently.

"It's all right. They'll be here soon. Probably. Right?" Christian said.

"May I ask you something, Christian?" Mary said. "When was the last time they were _on _time? Can you remember any appointments they ever _did _make on time? I can't. Not one!"

"Well, Mary, you don't exactly hold the 'Always On Time' record either," Christian responded with a grin.

"Well, I was on time to _this_!" Mary replied haughtily. Then she half-smiled. She knew that what Christian said was true. Then her thoughts returned to how long they had been waiting, and she scowled again. "And I'm never _this _late!"

"Whatever you say."

"I'm serious!"

Suddenly from the other side of the room came the triumphant exclamation, "No, I'm Sirius!"

Sirius, James, Remus, and Peter had just come up the stairs. All four of them looked nervous. Peter was (yet again) wiggling his annoying little arse around.

"Besides," he added, smiling, "when are _you _ever serious?"

"You're one to talk!" Mary answered.

"So are you!"

"And that wasn't even a good joke. 'Oh, I'm Sirius, haha, I'm so funny.' Never heard that one before!"

"Deep down, I know you think—"

"You're late!" Liz interrupted. "Why were you so late? We said 10! Not 10:30! Ten! Is this too difficult a concept for you?"

"Well, we—"

"I don't care," Liz said. "So, we all know why we're here. To become… er… transgenderal."

Sirius said, "Oh boy! It's my dream come true. Can my name be Lucy?"

The others stared at him in amusement. James said, "No, I want _my _name to be Lucy!"

Sirius grinned. "Are you sure you don't want it to be Lily?"

James turned very red. "Hey!"

"Just asking. But maybe you should think it over."

"Hmph."

"Can we begin…" Liz asked. Nobody paid attention.

"You're so mean to me," James said to Sirius. Meanwhile, Christian and Mary had started a conversation with Remus about what pranks they had planned for the Slytherins that night.

She tried again. "Please can we just do this…" Again, no one listened.

Then Liz got mad.

"_WOULD EVERYBODY JUST SHUT YOUR PIEHOLE!"_

Liz's voice echoed on the walls in an astonishing (and somewhat amusing, if you weren't the one being screamed at) display of brutality. All seven students of her friends stared in silence at the usually good-tempered band geek. "Thank you."

"Is there… something you need to say?" Christian asked Liz.

"Yes. Can we just get this over with? I'm no more keen on being a member of the opposite sex than anyone, but if we can just hurry up and do it…"

All eyes were on Liz. Everyone was completely still. Peter wasn't even wiggling his butt around.

"Why is everybody so quiet?" Liz asked innocently.

"Uh… never mind. Let's just go," Allison said.

"Okay then. Well, the easiest way to do this would probably be for everyone to pair up with someone, and just change them," Liz suggested.

Everyone did so. Liz paired up with James, Mary with Remus, Sirius with Allison, and Christian got stuck with Peter.

"OK, GO!"

A cacophony of "_Mentrigliosa_!" and "_Maletesnic_!" ensued, along with eight blue beams of light. When it was over, the eight friends beheld a supremely disconcerting sight.

Standing right in front of each one… was him or herself.

**(A/N: I'll refer to each person as who they actually are, then put a slash , then put the new body they're in. Example: Sirius/Allison is Sirius in Allison's body.)**

"AAAAAAH!" Mary/Remus shouted.

"EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" Sirius/Allison squealed. "Whoa. What was that? I… I _squeaked_!""

"That, Sirius," Christian/Peter said, "was your feminine instincts kicking in."

"I have a question," said Allison/Sirius said. "Why didn't our voices change? I mean, Sirius… well, Sirius 'eeped', but our tones and pitches weren't altered at all. Our voices sound exactly the same as before."

"The spell is only for appearance. Only your physical appearance changes. Not your mind, voice, anything else," Remus/Mary said.

"Ah," Allison/Sirius said.

"If I were you," Mary/Remus said to Allison/Sirius and Liz/James, "I'd be worried about those two having your bodies."

The two girls—well, now guys—realized what they meant, and went over to Sirius/Allison and James/Liz.

"You had better not… _do _anything, you hear? If you do, I'll kick your—posteriors."

"Ooh, Allison, is that a threat?" Sirius/Allison asked mockingly.

Allison/Sirius put her face no more than an inch away from Sirius/Allison's, looked him straight in the eye, and said in a menacing voice, "Yes."

"Oh." Pretending to be unruffled, as soon as Allison/Sirius turned around, Sirius/Allison slowly backed away. He whispered to James/Liz, "Am _I _that tight?"

"No," James/Liz said.

"Oh, good."

Meanwhile, in a different part of the room, the girls-now-guys were discussing their predicament.

"Why'd I get stuck as annoying old Wormtail?" Christian/Peter whined.

"Hey, when you complain like that, you actually sound a lot like Peter," Mary/Remus said cruelly.

"What! That's an insult!"

"Sorry, Pete—uh, Christian," Mary/Lupin replied.

"If you don't stop calling me Peter, I'll put a hex on you!" Christian/Peter warned.

"Well, I'll put Veritaserum in your drink—and then send you to the guys! Well, girls, now." Mary waved her wand at Christian threateningly. See, all of the girls-now-guys knew that Christian had a deep love for—well, one of their friends, anyway.

"I'll fight you!" Christian challenged.

"Whoa, Christian. _Some_body's having a testosterone rush…" Mary laughed.

Christian automatically responded with the amicable insult they always used on each other. "Well, you're a man!"

"Well, yes, Christian, I am."

Christian started to say, "What—" then realized what Mary/Remus was talking about. "Okay, never mind. Sorry."

"Oi! EVERYBODY! C'mere!" Christian/Peter called. Once everyone had assembled, she said, "Okay guys, it's about 10:45. This little…adventure…will end at 10:45 p.m. Let's say we'll meet in—um—well, here works. I trust you can all get out of your dorms and here safely, _even _if it is after curfew?" She said this as if talking to everyone, but everyone knew that she was really talking to Peter/Christian.

Everyone but Peter/Christian nodded. However, after seeing everyone else consent, Peter/Christian turned red, then quickly nodded. He gulped audibly.

"Well, now that that's settled, everyone go." The eight students shuffled out of the room. Everyone in the room was nervous about the day they were about to have. "And don't forget to be the person you are now!"

As everyone left, Allison shouted, "And don't embarrass us!"


	4. Mascara, Malfoy, and Malevolent Laughter

James/Liz walked down the corridor with Sirius/Allison. The two were on their way to the Gryffindor common room. They weren't quite sure yet whether or not they were actually going to brave the terror of the girls' dorm.

James/Liz was having his doubts. "Why," he asked Sirius/Allison, "are we doing this? And why did we agree to be PBSing?"

Sirius/Allison replied cheerfully, "I don't know. I think they tricked us into doing this. They _are _smarter than us. And," he continued, grim now, "P_M_Sing will be an interesting experience."

"Interesting isn't always good," James/Liz said.

"Exactly," Sirius/Allison said ominously.

They reached the common room. "Password?" asked the Fat Lady.

"Sir Flagrastisius," Sirius/Allison told the Fat Lady, altering his voice to make it higher. Sadly, Sirius/Allison was a remarkably convincing girl. Smiling, the Fat Lady swung her painting open. "Have a nice day, girls!" she said merrily.

"Girls? What are you talking about? We're not—" James/Liz was cut off by Sirius/Allison's hand over his mouth.

"Ha ha, you're, you're a funny one, _Elizabeth_!" Sirius/Allison said loudly, grinning fraudulently. He beamed up at the Fat Lady. "Isn't she just the funniest, GIRLIEST, most feminine little GIRL you ever saw? Who is a GIRL? Because we're both GIRLS! Since birth! You know, when we were born as _GIRLS!"_

The Fat Lady looked at him strangely and didn't say anything.

"Erm, yes, we'll be going now," Sirius/Allison said. "J—uh, haha, er, _Liz_, let's go. Up to our dorm. The GIRLS' dorm! Because we're GIRLS!" He picked James/Liz up by the feet and dragged him into the common room.

"So what do we do now?" James/Liz asked Sirius/Allison in a low voice once they were in.

"I vote we go up to their dorms and poke around a little. You know, we've never actually been up there before…that whole stupid charm on the stairs."

"It does make an excellent Slip 'n Slide though."

"True…anyway, this could be an excellent opportunity to pull the winning joke on them."

"Fine. Lead the way, Lucy."

"No, you go first."

"No, you."

"You."

"We'll go together."

"Fine. On the count of three, run up the stairs."

"Okay. One…two…three!"

Each of them sprinted as fast as he could up the stairs.

"Now what?" James/Liz asked.

"Okay. First order of business…scope out vulnerable spots, or just see where a Dungbomb might fit. And James—Liz, I mean, stop covering your eyes, tosspot."

"No. I feel like a creeper."

"Don't, it looks just like ours, except a whole lot neater. And with more clothes and magazines and rubbish."

James/Liz reluctantly uncovered his eyes. "AAH!" He buried his face in his hands again.

"What the heck are you screaming about?" Sirius/Allison asked. He glanced over to the side of the room that James/Liz had been looking at when he AAHed. Then Sirius/Allison saw it, too. "EEP! What _is _that thing?" he squeaked.

"Sirius, go and see what it is."

"My name is Allison, and I nominate _you_."

"No. It's gonna eat me."

"You wish."

"Hey! That's not nice! I—I can't believe you said that!" James/Liz burst into tears. "I HATE YOU! GOD, YOU ARE SO MEAN!"

"Whoa," Sirius/Allison said.

"I HATE YOU!" James/Liz thundered.

"I'm…I'm sorry?" Sirius/Allison tried.

Suddenly, James/Liz's face broke into a huge grin, and ran over and hugged Sirius/Allison until asphyxiation became a looming possibility. "It's okay! I love you! You're my best friend! I just love people! Love 'em! Hooray! I love you!"

Sirius/Allison said, "It wasn't that bad for me. Poor James."

"Yeah, it was." An unconvincingly low, strained voice traveled up the stairs. Allison/Sirius, Christian/Peter, Mary/Remus, and Liz/James followed it. "If you don't believe me…we've got pictures."

"Hey! How'd you get up here? Guys can't get in the girls' dorms!" Sirius said.

"Well, we got up here, so obviously it knows we're girls, sort of," Christian/Peter said.

"Then…how did _we _get up?" Sirius contemplated, meaning himself and James.

"You must be girly enough for the stairs," Christian said as she shrugged.

James was now throwing a fit on Liz's bed. Liz/James remarked, "I feel bad for the kid."

Allison/Sirius said, "Yeah, but he kind of deserves it." Her friends agreed with her.

"What? Why? No he doesn't!" Sirius replied defensively.

"Actually…" Mary/Remus said. "Hate to break it to you, Sirius, but yeah, he does."

"For what?" Sirius inquired indignantly.

"For being an arrogant­—" Allison/Sirius began.

"Condescending—" Mary/Remus interrupted.

"Diabolical—" Allison/Sirius continued.

"Pompous—" Christian/Peter added.

"Opprobrious—" Allison/Sirius kept on.

"Supercilious—" Liz/James put in.

"Egotistical—" Mary/Remus contributed.

"Idiot," Allison/Sirius finished.

"And that's not all," Christian/Peter said.

"Yeah," Mary/Remus said. "He's also—"

"Okay! Okay! I get it!" Sirius shook his head. "But gentlemen, I don't think James is smart enough to be diabolical."

"Say, where're Remus and Peter?" Mary/Remus asked.

"I'll bet Remus is up in the library, looking for the counterspell just in case," Sirius/Allison said. "And I'll bet you five Galleons that ol' Petey is down in the Great Hall snarfing muffins."

James/Liz wailed loudly. "YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT ME! STOP IT!"

"James, we're not—" Sirius/Allison started to say.

"YOU SAID MUFFINS! I HEARD YOU SAY MUFFINS! I HEARD YOU!"

"Yes, I said muffins, but that doesn't mean we were talking about—"

"YES IT DOES! YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT ME! I KNOW IT! _I WANT CHOCOLATE!"_

Mary/Remus produced a large candy bar from her bag and handed it to James/Liz. "Here," she said. "Here. Eat this. Then take this…" she handed James/Liz two transparent blue capsules.

"Hey!" Liz/James complained. "That's _my _body! What are you feeding it chocolate for?"

"What are those blue things?" Sirius/Allison asked.

"It's fine, Liz," Christian/Peter reassured Liz/James. "If he makes you fat, just do something bad to _his_ body."

There was silence in the room for a second.

"That's real cute, Christian," Mary/Remus said sarcastically.

Sirius stood near Christian/Peter in confusion. "I don't get it," he said slowly.

Everyone else laughed at him.

"Sirius!" Allison/Sirius said. "You are _such _an idiot!"

Calming down, they noticed James/Liz painting a picture of flowers and hearts arranged blindingly around a rainbow. He went to Sirius/Allison and handed it to him, saying, "For one of my best friends!"

Sirius/Allison said under his breath, "I thought the whole world was your friend."

James/Liz heard him and said a tad too happily, "It is! I've got some pictures to make!" He turned around and went back to work.

"At least he's not angry," said Liz/James.

"Hey look! There's Remus!" Mary/Remus said.

"Hi everyone," Remus/Mary said as he entered the dormitory. "I was in the library, looking up the counterspell, just in case."

"Told you," Sirius/Allison said to the room at large.

"Where's Peter?" Allison/Sirius asked.

"In the Great Hall. He found the muffins," Remus/Mary said, half-smiling.

"WHAT?!" Christian said, outraged. "He's in my body, and he's just sitting there, eating MUFFINS?! He's so embarrassing! I'm gonna kill him!" And with that, she stomped down the stairs. Seeing Peter's body stomp was amusing.

Liz/James got everyone's attention with a "HEY! Everyone c'mere!" As the five students came towards her, she said, "Allison, Mary and I decided that we're gonna teach you guys how to put on makeup."

"Uh…sounds like fun…" Remus/Mary said unenthusiastically. "Must we?"

"Do you want to stay in this dorm the whole day?" Liz/James asked rhetorically.

"Yes."

"It doesn't matter, you still have to put on makeup."

Remus/Mary groaned and said, "Fine. But I'm not going first."

Mary/Remus laughed and said, "Of course not, you'll all go at the same time. Liz, you beautify James…Allison, go with Sirius." The six went into the bathroom of the girls' dorm.

"Whoa," Sirius/Allison announced in amazement. "There's so much…stuff."

"What did you expect?"

Suddenly from the dorm came Christian's voice. "And you were just EATING MUFFINS?! Are you INSANE?! WHY did they make me switch with YOU of all people?! I'd rather switch with Crabbe—Malfoy—ANYONE BUT YOU, GIT!" She paused, then called to her six friends, "Where are you guys?"

Liz/James called her into the bathroom.

Christian/Peter stomped in, holding Peter/Christian's wrist death-grip style. "This stupid nark— embarrassing me—WHY DID YOU MAKE ME SWITCH PLACES WITH HIM?! GOD!"

"Christian—it's almost over," Liz/James said in a hasty (and ineffective) effort to calm her friend down.

"IT WON'T BE OVER SOON ENOUGH, _TRUST ME!" _Christian/Peter bellowed.

"Well, Christian, now you get the joy of giving Peter a makeup lesson."

Christian/Peter stared for a moment, then slowly, an incredibly evil smile crept on to her face. She rubbed her hands together and said wickedly, "Okay, then. Let's begin, shall we?" She couldn't conceal a little cackle.

Peter/Christian squealed in fright.

"Okay," said Liz/Peter, holding up an eyeliner pencil. "This is eyeliner. We have brown, black, dark blue, light blue, rose, peach, teal, torque, green, purple, yellow, orange, red, and at least 15 multiple shades for each of those colors."

Sirius/Allison cracked, "So this is what you use to draw your face on every day?"

Liz/James said, "You'd be surprised." She started attempting to putt some on James/Liz. "No—James, idiot—OPEN your eye—if you close it I can't put it on you—"

James/Liz grinned and said, "Exactly."

Liz/James stared at him for a second, then looked at her girl-turned-man friends. "Any ideas?" she asked.

"I'd say," Mary/Remus said mischievously, "Bring out the eyelash curler!"

Allison/Sirius, Liz/James, and Christian/Peter joined Mary/Remus in laughing malevolently. Sirius/Allison leaned over to his buddies and whispered, "This doesn't sound good, mates."

Liz/James opened a drawer and brought out a small contraption that nevertheless looked capable of killing people.

"GAAH!" James shrieked, exceeding himself in the manly charm department. He cowered. "Don't hurt me!"

"This doesn't _hurt _people, moron," Allison/Sirius told him with a laugh. "All we're gonna do is hold your eyes open by putting your eyelashes in the curler, pinching it shut, then pulling your eyes open by the tips of your eyelashes. Relax. This will only hurt a lot."

"Now," Liz/James said, "we can either do that or you can open your eyes. Whichever one you want. And I won't poke you in the eye, I swear. At least not if you just open your goddamn eyes."

"AAH!" screamed James/Liz. "Okay! Okay! I'll open my eyes! Just don't let it attack!"

With that, the four formerly female students set to work putting eyeliner on the four former fellows. Much of the conversation during this period sounded like, "OW! You poked me in the eye!" "No I didn't!" "Yes you did! Why do you think my eye is all red and puffy?" "I don't know, heroin?" When they were done, the talented girls-now-guys had somehow managed to put eyeliner on the stupid idiots. **(A/N: If I say 'stupid idiots', 'idiots', or something like that, it's referring to the guys-now-girls.)** Next came eyeshadow. "This is eyeshadow," Allison/Sirius explained. "It's color for your eyelids." The boys didn't understand was what the ultimate purpose of it was, but they submitted to the will of the girls inhabiting their bodies. After eyeshadow came (cue _Psycho_ music) mascara.

"This is mascara," Christian/Peter said. "You put it on your eyelashes. The colors are—wait. It would take too long to tell you all of them—we have like 800,000 different colors between us."

"Hmm—what do you think for my James in my body?" Liz/James asked. "With that outfit I'd say Brown Black, but—"

"Are you insane?!" Allison/Sirius crowed. "With those color contacts?! Brown Black is a definite NO. I'd say…Black Brown."

"Good idea!" Liz/James said happily. "What was I thinking? Brown Black would be terrible! Black Brown it is!"

Christian/Peter looked over and said, "I personally think that 11:30 Black would suit that hair color with that outfit best."

Mary/Remus argued, "No way. 11:30 Black? Please. 11:32 Black is the way to go. It just has that extra…you know…two minutes."

Allison/Sirius said, "Well, how about Light Black? That goes with a lot."

They agreed, and Liz/James commenced applying Light Black mascara to James/Liz's eyelashes as the idiots stared in confusion.

"How about you, Sirius?" Allison/Sirius asked. "What color do you want?"

Sirius/Allison looked up at her, grinned broadly and said, "Do you have Sirius Black?"

"You're hilarious."

As he laughed at his own joke, Sirius/Allison finished, "Then I'll have 11:35 Black, or whatever James had."

"WHAT?!" Allison/Sirius shrieked. "_11:35 BLACK?! _AHAHAHA!" she dissolved into laughter.

"What's so funny?" Christian/Peter asked.

"Sirius said 11:35 Black for his, her, whatever—mascara!" Allison/Sirius explained through her laughter.

Her girl-now guy friends joined her in laughter. "You're kidding," Liz/James asked. "_11:35 Black? _Sirius, you're on drugs._" _

They continued to talk and laugh as Allison/Sirius continued the difficult task of finding the right mascara for Sirius/Allison.

Allison/Sirius held up four bottles of mascara and said, "Hey guys, I can't decide. Black Bear Black, Brown Bear Brown, Black Bear Brown, or Brown Bear Black for Sirius? Or maybe Female Cardinal Brown? Jack Rabbit in Fall Brown? Burning Leaves Gray? I can't decide!"

As Liz/James tossed her a bottle she suggested, "Here. Use this. It's really nice. It goes with your hair and skin. I love it! It's called Medium Light Dark Black. If you don't like that, I also have One Degree Above Medium Dark Light Black."

Allison/Sirius considered a moment, then said, "What about that really cool stuff you got last week? Wasn't it Medium Light Dark Brown Grayish Blue-green Black or something?"

Liz answered, "You mean, 'Medium Dark Light Brown Grayish Blue-green Black?'"

"Yeah!"

Liz/James tossed her the bottle. After everyone was done putting mascara on one of the guys-now girls, Liz/James said, "Okay. Last but not least is lip gloss." This lesson went fairly easily, except that James/Liz at first refused to put it on. "No," he said stubbornly. "I already have eyeliner, mascara, and cakey eye shit. I refuse to subject myself to this!"

"James," Mary/Remus said warningly.

"Okay, fine. But I'm never doing this again!"

"Thanks, James. You look so pretty!"

He grumbled something under his breath in reply.

"OK," Christian/Peter said. "We should change and go."

"Change?" Sirius/Allison asked.

"You're not gonna go around wearing _that _all day, are you?" Christian/Peter said. The eight students went back into the dorm room. The girls-now-guys started picking out clothes for the guys-now-girls. When they were done, they had selected everyday clothing that they commonly wore. Allison/Sirius had jeans and a sweatshirt. Liz/James had a T-shirt and jeans. Christian/Peter had khakis and a thin sweater, and Mary had a long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans. They each gave their clothes to their corresponding person. The idiots put the clothes on. Thank God for James's Invisibility Cloak, or that whole affair could have been really awkward. After they put the clothes on, they all went to the guys' dorms to get clothes for the girls-now-guys.

When the girls were fully changed, Christian/Peter was dressed conservatively in stickpants and a shirt with a collar. Everyone else had jeans and a T-shirt and a sweatshirt.

"Haven't you idiots ever heard of bloody belts?" Allison/Sirius asked while unsuccessfully attempting to secure her pants somewhere _above _her knees.

"What's that?" Sirius joked.

"Nark._"_

Once the girls-now-guys had changed, the eight students went downstairs to the common room. Since they had nothing else to do, they decided to check the announcement board, then run around the school wreaking havoc, as they often did.

"Hey look!" Allison/Sirius said. "There's going to be a dance this Friday! What's it for?" She read a little bit further into the flyer, then answered her own question. "First Annual celebrating…Back-to-School?" She paused. "They've never had one of these before, have they?"

"No," Liz/James said.

"Going to school doesn't exactly seem like something I'd celebrate," said James/Liz.

"Are you kidding? If you lived in my house you would," Sirius/Allison said. "Who are we supposed to go with, Allison?"

Allison/Sirius looked at the poster for a moment longer, then answered, "It says that you can go to this dance with a date or with friends."

"That means dates," said Sirius/Allison. "The whole 'friends' thing is for people who can't get dates. Speaking of Peter, where is he?" Nobody had noticed Peter/Christian slip out.

"If he is even _thinking _about muffins right now, he is going to _die," _said Christian/Peter through clenched teeth.

The seven friends sat down around the fireplace and started chatting idly about the dance. Meanwhile, in the hall…

Peter/Christian walked stoutly towards the library. He—she—he didn't even know what gender he was anymore! All he knew was that he was going to find the counterspell to this idiotic charm, he would if it took him until ten o' clock, he'd never quit—

"Hello, Christian."

His left eardrum was suddenly resonating with the sound of a smooth arrogant voice. Peter/ Christian knew exactly who it was even without turning around. This was one of the many people whom Peter/Christian had never wanted to face alone.

Lucius.

"You look lovely in that outfit," said Malfoy as Peter/Christian swallowed and slowly turned to face him.

"Um—hi Luc—I mean, hi Lucius," Peter/Christian said. His voice cracked conveniently halfway through his sentence.

"Christian, I assume you have heard about the Celebratory Dance this Friday."

"Um, yes, of—of course," said Peter/Christian, even though he really hadn't. He was shaking so much he couldn't believe that Lucius hadn't noticed.

"Do you have a date?"

"No," Peter stuttered.

"Well then, I would be much obliged if you would accompany me. Would you allow me to escort you?"

"Oh—k—kay," Peter/Christian mumbled. He was sure this was going to turn out disastrously.

"Excellent. I will be waiting at your common room door at precisely 7:55 p.m. on Friday. I will see you then." With that, he bowed—bowed! What a creeper!—and walked away. Peter/Christian stared in disbelief.

"I—I have to tell—Christian," he stammered doubtfully to himself. He turned around and uncertainly headed back in the direction of the Gryffindor common room.


	5. Christian's New Look, or Lack Thereof

**Chapter 5. FINALLY! Just so everyone knows, that last chapter took me like two million years to write… okay so it only took me a week… but it was 18 pages long on Word. **

**That's long. **

**At least for me it is. I can't believe that I had the attention span for that. And by the way, the plot is going to begin soon. I promise.**

**Anyway, I own no characters, unfortunately, and "Bandgeek527", be grateful for what you already have. I could put you with Snape if I wanted to. Which I might. Hehe. (Evil grin)**

**So, anyway… dun dun dundun… Chapter 5 **

"What are you going to wear?" Liz/James asked Mary/Remus as they sat on the couch of the Gryffindor common room. The topic of conversation was naturally Friday night's dance.

"I don't know," Mary/Remus replied thoughtfully. "I was thinking my dark green robes… what about you?"

"I think maybe my purple robes," Liz/James answered.

"What about those blue ones of yours?"

"Yeah, maybe those."

Meanwhile, Sirius/Allison, James/Liz, and Remus/Mary were all talking about the dance also… but in a different context.

"Dances are stupid," Sirius/Allison grumbled. "Why do I have to go?"

"D'ya think Lily will go with me?" James/Liz asked hopefully.

Sirius stood up. "Would you shut up about Lily already? Lily this, Lily that, Lily, Lily, LILY! JUST STOP IT! GOD! ALL YOU EVER TALK ABOUT IS LILY! GAAH! LILY, LILY, _LILYYY!"_

James/Liz stared at Sirius/Allison in disbelief. A few feet away, the girls-now-guys had heard Sirius/Allison's outburst (who hadn't?), and turned around.

"And so it begins," Liz/James remarked amusedly.

Christian/Peter said, "This has been a major improvement. Last time it only took four minutes. I'm impressed."

Allison/Sirius said, "Sirius."

"_WHAT?! WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME? I'M ONLY ONE GIRL!" _Sirius screeched, then started bawling.

"Sirius. It's okay. Um… everyone knows that you're only one… er… only one girl."

"I'M SO STRESSED OUT! WAAAAH!"

"We know. Don't worry. Everything will be okay."

"NO IT WON'T! NO ONE LIKES ME! _I _DON'T EVEN LIKE ME!"

"Sirius, everyone still likes you."

"I HATE MYSELF!"

"Why?"

"Because I'm fat, and ugly, and stupid, and mean, and fat, and disgusting, and EVERYBODY HATES ME!"

"This is embarrassing," Liz/James said.

"No you're not," Allison/Sirius said in reply to Sirius/Allison. "And nobody hates you. Here. We gave these to James before, and they helped him feel better, remember?" She tried to hand him two of the same blue pills that they had given James/Liz, but he refused to take them. She waited a second, considering. Sirius/Allison opened his opened his mouth to start wailing again, but Allison/Sirius reached over, grabbed Sirius/Allison's head, dropped the blue pills in his mouth, and then forced his mouth shut.

Sirius/Allison stopped in surprise for a second, but quickly got over his surprise and started trying to get away. However, seeing as how Allison/Sirius was still holding his mouth shut, escaping was proving difficult.

Everyone waited tensely. Allison/Sirius let go to see what would happen.

Approximately four seconds later, Sirius/Allison broke into a huge grin and started dancing. None of the six students watching was quite sure what dance he was attempting to do, but it looked suspiciously like a cross between the macarena and the cha cha slide.

Allison/Sirius turned very pale and ran towards Sirius/Allison, fearful that someone might walk in and see her body doing the macarena/cha cha slide. "Stop!" she shouted! "We understand! You're happy! Just _stop!" _

"I love you!" Sirius/Allison said. "I love you, Jamesy, and you, Christian, and you, Remus, and you, Mary, and you, Liz, and even _you, _Peter!" For Peter/Christian had just entered the common room, closely followed by a tall guy that none of them knew.

"Hello--" the unknown kid began, but Christian/Peter interrupted.

"Shut up," she said to him. He stepped back, obviously taken aback by her rudeness. Then she turned to Peter/Christian. "Just _what _were you doing, you bloody moron?" she asked Peter/Christian, completely ignoring the other kid. "If you even _say _the word muffin, if you even _think _it, I'LL CURSE YOU INTO BLOODY OBLIVION!"

Peter/Christian trembled for a moment, cowering in fear, then said nervously, "Mlfycmpooenahulnsxdouodancnisdys!"

"What?!"

Peter/Christian gulped, then said hastily in the trademark high-pitched nervous squeal, "Malfoy-- came up to me-- in hall-- asked me-- to-- to dance-- said-- yes--"

"_WHAT?!" _Christian/Peter roared, nearly knocking Peter/Christian off his (her) feet. "_MALFOY BLOODY ASKED YOU-- ME-- TO THE BLOODY DANCE-- AND YOU BLOODY SAID BLOODY YES?! WHAT IS BLOODY WRONG WITH YOU?! PLEASE BLOODY TELL ME YOU'RE BLOODY JOKING!"_

"EEE!" Peter/Christian squealed. "AAH! It's true! Don't hurt me!" Then he ducked out from the corner in which Christian/Peter had trapped him, ran towards the dorms, went up the staircase to the guys' dorm first, then realized his mistake and headed to the girls' dorm. All eight of them had forgotten about the other guy in the room. All six of the friends that remained in the room-- and the mystery kid-- stared at the seething Christian/Peter. Then the realization hit.

"Oh God," Liz/James said.

"You have to go to the dance with Lucius," Mary/Remus added completely unnecessarily.

"Yes, I realize that," Christian/Peter hissed slowly through gritted teeth.

No one noticed the other kid standing at the back of the room, looking wildly around himself and then burying his head in his hands. They _did _notice him, however, when he began having an emotional breakdown.

"Who _are _you?! I thought you were a male. But your voice is too _high _to be a male's! And then these three-- who _also _have high voices-- are talking about you going to a dance with _Lucius?! _Last time I checked, that was a male name! Why did I come here?! Why? WHY?! And then you--" he pointed at Christian/Peter-- "you are insane and violent! What is wrong with you people?! And stop looking at me!" he said in vain to the eight students, who were all staring at him. He said all of this in a Scottish or Welsh accent, and seemed quite desolate.

Then Mary/Remus, although it took a second, realized what he was talking about. "Oh!" she gasped. Then in a lower-pitched voice she said loudly to her friends, "Erm… guys… as in NOT GIRLS… because _my name is Remus, and I'm a guy… _Maybe we should introduce ourselves to… what's your name?" she asked the mystery kid.

"Aidan," he said miserably.

"Right. Introduce ourselves to Aidan. _I'm Remus," _she said, hinting a little too obviously to the others to act like the person whose body they were in.

"I would say 'nice to meet you,' but I would rather not be dishonest to you all," he replied dismally.

"Well, you're not one--" Sirius began in his regular voice.

"Sir-- Allison!" Allison/Sirius interrupted in her phony deep voice.

"Oh," Sirius/Allison said. Then in a higher voice he continued, "Well, you're not one for good first impressions, are you?" This offense was directed towards Aidan.

Allison/Sirius listened to Sirius/Allison saying this and thought, _Well, Sirius, you're not exactly one for good first impressions either! _She was _not _happy with Sirius/Allison. First of all, Aidan was new, and Sirius definitely shouldn't have been treating him like that. It wasn't his fault that Peter was annoying. Secondly, to make matters worse, Sirius had been in _Allison's _body when he'd said it, so now Aidan would hate Allison instead of Sirius, who had been the _real _idiot behind the insults! This made Allison/Sirius so mad that she walked over to Sirius/Allison and slapped him across the face.

"Ow!"

"Well, you deserve--" Allison/Sirius began. However, Aidan broke into her sentence with an overwhelmed, "_Men do not slap!_ _AAH!_ Who _are _you?!"

Between the long meeting in the trophy room, getting makeup, clothes, and advice on how to act like a member of the opposite sex, helping James/Liz and Sirius/Allison through PMS, talking about the dance, meeting Aidan and everything else that had gone on, it was about 2:30 in the afternoon. Every single one of the "transgenderals" thought it was time to switch back. No one cared about the agreement. It seemed insignificant and stupid now. Liz/James decided to take action.

Under the pretense of a low, manly voice, she said, "Aidan, we'll be right back. James, Sirius, Allison, Remus, Peter, Mary, let's go. I'll meet you guys in the _trophy room." _She hoped she had conveyed her message to them: It was time to switch back. "I'll get Pet-- I mean, I'll get Christian. Meet you up there." She ran up the stairs as her six friends shoved each other to get out of the common room first.

Once Liz was up the stairs, and the other six were out of the common room, Aidan looked around himself, sank to his knees, and yelled, "_Adel'tai! _WHYYYYY?!They are such_ enegnosi!" _

As Aidan shouted in a garbled mix of English and his own language that he hated this place and the students he had just met were-- well, we'll substitute _bloody morons _for what he really said-- Liz had run up the stairs only to find Peter/Christian having an emotional breakdown. _When will these stupid breakdowns stop? _Liz/James thought. _I wonder if _we're _this bad when we're PMSing._ She shuddered. _Bleah. I hope not._

"Peter, come on! We're changing back!"

But Peter/Christian, facedown on the bed, would not budge. Liz/James could see his whole body trembling with both PMS-induced tears and the nervous shaking that Peter always did anyway. The he lifted his face up from the pillow. With a tear- stained face and glassy eyes, he blubbered, "Why does everyone hate me?"

Liz/James rolled her eyes. _This is getting old, _she thought. _First James, then Sirius, then Peter… wait. What about Remus? Why hasn't he… oh. I bet _he's _crying his eyes out right now. _She sighed. "Nobody hates you, Peter." She sighed again. "All right, fine. Here're the blue pills." She handed him the pills. He took them immediately. As with the other PMSing guys-now-girls, Peter got a huge smile on his face almost immediately. "I lo--" he started to say, but Liz interrupted.

"_Don't _start with me!"she said viciously. "Come on. Trophy room. _Now. _Run." As they passed through the common room, Liz/James didn't even notice that Aidan was nowhere to be seen.

Liz/James and Christian/Peter began to speed towards the trophy room. Well, with Peter/Christian, they couldn't exactly 'speed' (not Christian's fault-- Peter was slow no matter what body he was in), but Liz/James did manage to get Peter/Christian to kind of power-waddle.

Then Liz/James heard a slimy, greasy, disgusting voice just dripping with sarcasm. "Why, hello, Potter," it came, slimily, greasily, disgustingly, and just dripping with sarcasm. "Nice afternoon, isn't?"

Without even turning around, Liz/James stopped, folded her arms, and said, "What do you want, Snape?" She said his name as if it were a swear word.

Peter/Christian wiggled his butt once and ran.

"Potter, Potter, Potter," Snape said. "You think I want something from you? Well, I don't. I don't want anything that's been touched by your disgusting hands."

"Oh, clever comeback, Snivellus," Liz/James said impatiently. "Listen, douchbag, I've gotta be somewhere in about… well… I'd say five minutes ago. So if you don't mind, I'm leaving." She started to walk away. "Oh yeah. I almost forgot." She turned around again. After taking a few steps towards Snape, she punched him in the face as hard as she could. "You're welcome." She started to walk away. "Ew. You really _are _slimy. That's disgusting. Take a bloody shower."

Snape stared after her in shock as blood began coming out of his face. "Eee!" he squelped, then turned and ran.

Once Peter/Christian and Liz/James arrived at the trophy room for the second time that day, Remus/Mary said, "Oh, thank God! It's about time…" and sighed with relief.

Sirius/Allison said, "Wait, what are you talking about? Why did you tell us to meet here?"

James/Liz echoed, "Yeah, why are we meeting here?"

Liz/James shook her head in exasperation. "Bloody gits," she said. "We're changing back."

"It's 10:45 already?" Sirius/Allison asked stupidly.

"No," Allison said. "It's only 2:45."

And we're changing already? But I'm in a girl's body and I haven't even gotten to do anything!"

Allison/Sirius said, "SIRIUS! GIT!" and started moving towards him, arms outstretched, hands looking like they were ready to close around Sirius's neck and squeeze tight.

Sirius realized he was about to die and nervously added, "… like… put my own makeup on!"

Allison/Sirius said, "That had better be what you meant," even though she knew it wasn't.

Sirius/Allison leaned over to James and said quietly, "My whole life just flashed before my eyes."

Liz/James sad, "_Any_way…"

Mary/Remus said, "Oh, please can we switch back now?"

"Yeah," Liz/James said. "Okay," she said, taking charge of the situation. "Everyone do the same thing as before. Just change back the person who you changed before."

The eight students followed her directions, and hurriedly got back with the person that they had previously changed. Yet another cacophony of spells was said, and eight more blue beams of light were seen. When the noise and beams of light had subsided, the eight students were greeted with a very happy sight:

"I'M BACK IN MY OWN BLOODY BODY!" Mary shouted unnecessarily, and also quite ecstatically. She seemed to have a knack for unnecessaryness.

Everybody was amazingly happy to be back in his or her own body. Well, not quite everybody. You see, not everyone _was _entirely back in his or her own body. In the center of the room stood an incredibly mad, seething Christian. She slowly turned around to face Peter.

"_PE-- TER…_"

"EEP! Wha... Wha… I… I… I'm sorry…" Peter's voice sank almost to a whisper. No, I lied. It actually sank all the way to a whisper. "Please… don't kill me…"

"_TOO LATE, IDIOT!"_ Christian roared, and instantly began chasing the fat little sped around the room. She almost immediately caught him, because as has already been established, Peter was one of the slowest people ever to waddle the Earth.

Once she had caught him, she grabbed him by the collar, and with a burst of angry adrenaline, picked him up by the collar and held him up against the wall.

"_I'M… GOING… TO KILL YOU!"_

"CHRISTIAN! STOP!" Allison bellowed as she rushed over and grabbed Christian's arms. "_What_ is the matter? What happened? You're back in your own body! What's wrong?" All she could see was the back of Christian's head, and Christian's hair was definitely all there.

Peter slid down the wall to the floor in relief.

"Peter, go stand watch by the door," Allison told him. Right now she just wanted to get him out of Christian's sight.

Christian hissed, "I'll tell you what's wrong…" and she turned around to face Allison.

Allison looked at her and gasped, then commenced staring in astonishment at Christian's face.

"Uh, Christian…" she said nervously. "There's something wrong with your face…"

As everyone had fallen silent when Christian had started threatening Peter's death, every person in the room was able to hear these words. They all looked over at Christian and gasped, except for Allison and Peter, who had already seen it.

On Christian's face there was… nothing. Just nothing. And it wasn't even the kind of nothing in which the nothing just seems to be caused by invisibility, so it appears as if there is simply nothing there, or you can see through it. No, the space that Christian's face had once occupied was now a dark, heavy nothing, an endless void where tangible darkness swirled infinitely.

"Can you see?" Allison asked. "Obviously you can hear and talk."

"Yes, I can see," growled Christian. "I just chased the bloody git around the room,do you think I can't see?"

"How'd you realize that you… how'd you realize?" Liz asked her in a faltering voice.

"We're in the _trophy_ room," Christian said, her voice sinking to a shaky, miserably monotonous level. "Everything _in_ here is reflective."

Mary ruined the horrible feeling that was building in the room by saying, "Oh my Merlin! Christian, what happened to your face?" quite unnecessarily, as usual, and also a bit late.

When all she got in reply were amused looks, she tried to redeem herself by saying, "I, er, was looking in the opposite direction. Sorry." However, curiosity and her fascination with shiny objects got the better of her, and she asked, "Christian, can I touch it? I'm sorry, but _please_ can I? Maybe I can even figure out what's wrong with it… with you."

Christian sighed heavily and said, "Fine." The only reason she consented to this was because she knew that like Allison, Liz, and herself, Mary was smart when it came to school, grades, that kind of thing. The only thing that Mary lacked that the others had was common sense. She was kind of like James and Sirius in that respect, which was not necessarily a good thing. The difference between the two insane Marauders and Mary was that she was a lot better at getting out of trouble. Actually, so were Allison, Liz and Christian, but the guys didn't know that. Unknown to the Marauders, the four girls actually went around wreaking havoc on most nights. Many of the girls' great plans were credited to the guys, because no one else in the school knew or even suspected that four Gryffindor girls at the top of their class would ever sneak around after hours misbehaving.

"Christian. Christian. _CHRISTIAN!"_

"AAAAAAAH! WHAT?" Christian was forced to break away from her thoughts. This was largely due to the fact that a) a hand was frantically waving around in front of where her eyes had once been, and b) someone was screaming her name at a volume so loud, she thought her eardrums would explode. Then she remembered that she didn't have eardrums anymore. She sighed in a very melancholy manner. _All I have is my hair, _she thought forlornly. _My stupid hair, just floating around on some sort of-- of-- _She tried to think of the word. _Some sort of black hole on my face. _Then suddenly she realized that while pitying herself, she had wandered off again into the realm that we all fondly know as La-La Land.

"Sorry," she said. "I don't mean to wander off, I just…" her voice trailed off.

"It's okay. We understand," Liz said comfortingly.

Christian sighed again and said, "Thanks, but I seriously doubt that... Mary, if you wanna try and figure out what's wrong now…"

"Okay!" Mary said happily. She ran over to Christian and starting inspecting the nothing. She tried to stick her arm inside, and when she was successful, she smiled and said, "Look! I can stick my hand inside!"

"Thanks," said Allison sarcastically, but not unkindly. "We hadn't noticed."

Mary looked inside the void, and even stuck a small part of her head into the void. Her eyes widened in shock, and she pulled her head out.

"What is it?" Christian asked, fearing the worst.

"Water," Mary said absentmindedly, looking thoughtful.

"Er… water?" Christian asked skeptically. Thinking Mary had gone completely insane, then remembering that Mary and she herself was insane, too, she asked again. "Water?"

Mary looked at her and nodded. "Water. It looks like your face is some kind of portal to another universe or something. Hold on. Let me try to touch it, to see if it's real."

Remus began, "I don't know if this is such a good idea…" but Mary was already nearly halfway in Christian's face. Her muffled voice came from inside, "Yep, it's real alri--" but was cut off suddenly as she began struggling. "Hey! Get off you filthy stupid thing! OW! BLOODY… THINGY! GET OFF!"

Remus, looking alarmed, ran over and began to try and pull her off. Everybody joined in except for two people. Peter, who was standing oblivious by the door, still keeping watch, was one of them. Of course Christian was the other. She didn't really have much practice in rescuing people who were half- submerged in her face.

With one seemingly simultaneous intake of breath, everyone pulled as hard as they could, and Mary came flying out. Rank, dripping seaweed was hanging off her arm, and the smell of salt and rotting flesh passed through the room.

"WHAT in the BLOODY NAME OF MERLIN was _THAT?!" _Christian asked.

"A giant… octopus thing…" Mary said, breathing heavily. "There were… all these tentacles… wrapped around my arm… and boy was it _smelly_!"

Christian started to say something, but Mary just plowed right on. "It was all water-- like it was in the middle of an ocean or something. It smelled really bad, and it looked like it was going to storm. This giant blob with all these arms-- these tentacles-- just came out of the water, cause I guess it saw me and it wrapped a tentacle around my arm and was trying to pull me in." She looked at her arm. "And now I have this smelly disgusting stuff on my arm, and I smell." She picked the seaweed off, rolled it into a ball, and threw it as hard as she could against the wall. However, instead of just hitting the wall and plopping to the floor, the seaweed landed on the wall perfectly in the shape of a sort of arch a little taller than a door, and stayed there.

"Whoa," said Sirius. "How'd you do that?"

"I don't know," said Mary as she went over to look at it. "I must be a genius or something!" Christian, Liz, and Allison followed. The guys just hung back, and Peter was still by the door in utter oblivion.

"Wow, I wonder what it is," Liz said, eyes full of questions. She touched it gingerly, and it suddenly sparkled gently. An odd, quiet, incessant humming noise began. The noise seemed to come from everywhere, and was so quiet that it seemed more like the room was buzzing or vibrating than that something was humming.

"What the…" Allison said quietly.

The door suddenly shimmered. Then a light so powerful that it was impossible to look at blasted into the room from the arch. Everyone covered his or her eyes. A huge, amazingly loud and wild wind sprang up out of nowhere. Somebody screamed, "_WHAT'S GOING ON?" _but nobody heard whoever it was over the wind.

The wind was so strong that it was literally picking the eight students up and tossing them around. Liz and Allison collided in midair, and both went spinning off into opposite directions. As the light faded enough for sight to be possible, Mary went flying past Christian. Christian distinctly heard Mary say, "WHEEE!" She (Mary) slammed against a wall and said, "Ooh, that's gonna hurt tomorrow." However, no one heard her, and by the time she had finished the sentence, she was back to flying around the room, nearly getting killed and having a jolly good time of it.

Christian flew past Peter just in time for her to see him turn green, squeeze his eyes shut, and vomit. She was unfortunate enough to be smashed into a wall, but at least she hadn't gotten chucked on.

The wind started to die down, along with the light, and every single person in the room sighed collectively. Then they realized what was going to happen next. As the wind stopped almost entirely, they fell to the ground, one-by-one for some odd reason. In addition to that, each one fell on top of the one that had landed immediately before them in a perfectly straight pile. First Mary fell, then James, then Sirius followed. Allison came next, then Peter, Remus, Christian, and finally Liz on top. Each time someone new landed, everyone below him or her would groan in pain. The worst part was, none of them could move an inch.

As Liz landed and the wind ended completely, Mary wheezed out from the bottom of the eight-person pileup, "That was NOT my fault!"

Suddenly, the entire pile of people fell apart. Bodies flew this way and that, but since they weren't very high off the ground, it didn't really hurt that much. Sirius landed near Allison. He smiled at her, and she smiled back, then blushed and got up.

Liz said, "Can we leave now?"

Allison said, "Thank Merlin's pointy beard that that's over."

"That was awful," Christian agreed.

All of the students thought that that had been the end.

They were wrong.

So wrong, so dreadfully wrong, that they would never forget what happened next. The worst had yet to come.

The worst came.

From every corner of the room, from every object, wall, even every person in the room, a white-hot heat exploded. The humming grew so loud that the students feared that the mere vibration would bring down the world on them. The only sound that could be heard besides the humming was screaming-- the unholy screams of eight young students experiencing incredible pain. Everything burned. The world was on fire. That is what it seemed like to the eight victims. Nothing could possibly have brought salvation. Nothing could help them to escape. None would survive.

It was at that moment that everything suddenly felt numb, peaceful and clear. Although they could see the white fire blazing around them, it seemed to each of the eight students as if he or she was sinking down into cool clear water, and looking at the sun from the bottom of a still, clear, peaceful, never-ending lake. They would stay here for eternity, but that was okay… Everything would be okay… If you would just let go… let go… don't try to hold on, just go…

Suddenly, unexpectedly, amazingly, everything stopped. Everything. The humming, the fire, the water-- it was all gone. Everything in the trophy room was as it should have been, except for the eight students, who were all lying sprawled on the floor.

They laid there in silence for minutes, just breathing, and feeling thankful that they were _able _to breathe. Finally, after probably a half-hour of just lying sprawled out on the floor, Liz said without moving, "Whoa." Her voice, like everybody else's, was very hoarse from screaming.

That "Whoa" pretty much summed everything up.

And Christian still didn't have a face.

Liz sat up, looked around. She looked at her legs and arms, just to make sure that they were still there, that they hadn't burned in the fire that had just swept the room. While looking at her arms, she noticed in her wrist a small mark about the size of her thumbnail. It was on the inside of her left wrist, right below where the bottom of the palm meets the arm. At first glance, it appeared to be nothing more than a simple scar, but something made Liz look again. Upon closer examination, she saw that the small white mark was unmistakably in the shape of a crescent moon. Its two points were very long, making the moon almost in the shape of a circle.

Allison sat up, shook the hair out of her eyes, and looked around. She noticed something on the wall. "Hey, what's that?" she asked slowly, bewilderedly. "Is that… is that a door?"

The other seven gradually, one-by-one, sat up and looked over to the wall at which she was staring. When they saw it, they gasped. A doorway had appeared in the shape of the arch of seaweed that Mary had thrown against the wall. Seeming to shimmer faintly with an unearthly light, it was quite ornately decorated. Carved upon it were pictures of animals, people, places, books, and more. Not one of the students noticed the tiny part near the bottom left, where eight of nine tiny faces carved into the odd stone looked exactly like the eight faces that were currently gaping in astonishment at the arch, and the ninth looked very familiar.

Where there should have been a wall behind the arch was an empty, black space, almost like Christian's "face". It was partially covered by a thin, tattered, black piece of cloth that was gently blowing with a wind that none of them felt. However, unlike Christian's "face", the void that occupied the arch contained many beautiful golden-white beams and swirls of light that were flying, tangling, breaking free, and just basically were in constant motion.

"Wow," Christian said. "It's actually kind of… well, pretty."

As the eight Gryffindors gathered around the arch, Mary opened her mouth to say something, but was cut off by Peter's small, shrill, nails-on-a-chalkboard, and now hoarse voice. "EEP! Somebody's coming! It looks like Filch! EEEEEHHHHH!" He ran to a far stack of trophies and dove under it, wriggling around until he was out of sight.

Somebody shouted, "Everybody _hide!" _Immediately, everyone tried to do just that, but since there were seven students running around the room, one without a face, that proved difficult.

Forced to make a quick decision, Liz looked wildly around the room, and saw no other means of escape. If there had been fewer people, or even if Christian had had a face, she knew the girls would probably have been able to get them out of trouble, but unfortunately neither of those very desirable circumstances were currently present. Apparently Allison had been having these same thoughts, and at the same time as Liz, she screamed, "_Everybody into the arch!" _No one hesitated a moment, except for Peter, who took a second to get out from underneath the shelf. Everyone ran into the arch in one big mass of people. Just as soon as Peter entered the arch, something happened. First, the void behind the arch disappeared, leaving naught but the wall behind it. Secondly, the curtain dissolved into thin air. Last of all, all of the candles were extinguished in the room for a mere second, then came back on again almost immediately. When the light came back, the arch was gone. It-- along with the students-- had disappeared. It was gone as if it had never been there.

Filch pushed the creaky door that opened into the trophy room. He looked around warily, but saw nothing out of its place. Everything was as it should have been; not one trophy was moved, smudged, or otherwise changed. Mrs. Norris ran into the room and immediately went over to where the arch had been mere moments ago. She batted a small token that was lying on the ground in front of where the arch had been. It was circular, like a coin, except slightly larger in circumference. The token had nine symbols on it. Each symbol was in a small circle, and each circle was by the edge of the token, forming a circle shape. The symbols were: an elegant-looking fish, the front view of the face of a cat, a small flame, some swirly lines, a mouth, an empty circle, a question mark, a circle with two evil-looking eyes, and a crescent moon exactly like the one Liz had seen on her wrist.

Filch took one last look around the room and, seeing nothing awry, closed the door and started walking down the hall. Realizing that Filch was leaving, Mrs. Norris also took one last look, but hers was aimed directly at the place in which the arch had been. She bounded out of the room and followed Filch down the hall.

"Must have been imagining it," Filch said to himself. "No one's been in there for weeks."


	6. This Chap Sucks the Very Life Out of You

**It is exactly 1:45 a.m. I am sitting at my friend's house, writing this, while she sits next to me, reading other people's fanfics on her dad's laptop.**

**I know you care.**

**But just for the record, chappy 5 was 19 pages long on Word. I seriously think that a tiny gnome has been sneaking into my house while I sleep and writing pages for me. This gnome lives in the cornfields and is trying to take over the earth with a screwdriver.**

**Yeah.**

**Let's just hope he comes back for Chapter 6…**

**Chapter 6**

**Wait! I almost forgot! Okay I was watching the third Harry Potter movie today, cause I was at my friend's house and we were bored and I had never seen it before blah blah blah. (Well, we were more talking about how emotionally disturbed the characters are than watching, but that's okay.) So as I was watching, I noticed that all of the adult males in Harry Potter were ugly. That meant that they were probably ugly in their youth. And as we all know, their youth is what I am writing about. So even though I sound like the girliest girl in the world (I'm not! ask anyone: laxgoalie, aquarius25, etc. etc.), I just want you all to know, 'my' (haha) characters aren't ugly. Except Peter. He's still short and fat. Though he looks better in his younger days** **than in the movie, I've decided for this fic. He's pretty creepy in the movie. So now that I've gotten that out of the way, I present to you…**

**The real, honest-to-God Chapter 6**

**Okay, so I lied. I just want to warn you: _don't read this chapter. _ I'm totally serious. This chapter is so boring, it's funny. But not funny enough to read. See, nothing happens in this chapter. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. This chapter really will suck the life out of you. I'm not even exaggerating. So if you're still reading, STOP. This chapter is really boring. If you scroll down to the very very very end, I'll just give you a synopsis. OK? OK.**

**Now here's Chapter 6. Again I ask you not to read. I'm kind of embarrassed, this chapter is so pointless and empty. But I don't feel like writing a whole new chapter. Thank you for your consideration. And remember, to prevent your own death, scroll down and read the synopsis. (Psycho theme begins to play in the background) Remember, _drugs kill. _So does this chapter.**

Nothing.

Utter silence.

Devoid of light, sound, touch, everything.

Nothing.

"Hello? Anybody?" Remus tried for the fifth time. He felt around in the darkness for a while, but couldn't feel anything. _Where are my friends?_ he wondered in alarm. _Where am I? Where's anyone?_ He tried again. "Hey! Guys! Are you there? Hello!"

Suddenly, thankfully, he heard a voice. "Remus, is that you? Where are you?"

"Of course it is. Who else would it be?"

"Well, it could be Liz, Christian, James, Allison, Sirius, or Peter, I suppose," the voice said thoughtfully.

"That was a rhetorical question—never mind. Where are you?" Because of the person's vague and somewhat daft answer, Remus could now be certain that it was Mary to whom he was speaking.

"Over here," Mary said from off to his left. He began to walk that way as she began to walk to her right, and they collided. Remus managed to get a hold of Mary's shoulder before she flew off in another direction.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Yeah, you?"

"I'm fine. Do you have any idea where we are?"

"You're asking me."

"Yeah, I guess you have a point."

As they continued this conversation, the other six students were wandering around aimlessly, calling out and feeling around themselves. Liz was especially having a hard time of it. She was miserable. Stumbling around blindly in the dark, she was thinking about how it had been she who had told the students to run into the arch. Now she was alone, and she saw no means of ever getting out of this mess. Suddenly she ran into something soft. "AAH!" she shrieked. She attempted to recoil, but couldn't, seeing as how whatever she had run into was holding her arms. Liz struggled for a moment, but whatever was holding her was too strong. So she did the last thing that she could think of: kicked as hard as she possibly could.

When her foot made contact with something, whatever had been holding her arms let go and said, "OOOOOOOOWWWWWW! BLOODY HELL! THAT SMARTS!" in a very high and unnatural-sounding voice.

Liz realized who it was and had just enough time to say, "Aidan?!" before he toppled over—directly on top of her.

And exactly at that moment, an ethereal, unearthly, and almost blinding white light flooded the area.

At the moment that the lights came on, nobody noticed the surroundings. However, I will tell you that what they were in was all white. There was no color, no shadows, nothing. Everything was white. There wasn't even a distinction between the ground and the walls, or the sky, if either of those things actually existed. It was all white. (Okay, it was kind of like that white place in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.) The whiteness extended in every direction as far as any eye could see. However, even after staggering around in the dark, the students were actually fairly close to each other, and so everyone was too busy staring at Liz underneath Aidan to really notice anything. Liz looked around as best she could with a hot guy on top of her, then realized what everyone was staring at. "Er… um… it's not what it looks like!" Liz shouted in vain.

Christian burst out laughing and began to emit a lengthy stream of meaningless babble. Mary offered to translate. "I'm not really sure," she said, "but I think that what she's saying is, 'You… you… you… ahahahaha!" She paused. "The next part is, 'Oh my god, Liz, haha. I can't haha believe you haha I believe you but I can't believe you haha haha. You're a moron.'"

Liz, who was still pinned underneath Aidan, gave her a dirty look.

"It's always the messenger that gets it!" said Mary, throwing up her arms.

"Errr," Liz growled menacingly. She really wasn't able to do anything but grunt, because of course Aidan was directly on top of her.

"You know, if you wanted some time alone, you should have just told us," Christian chortled when she finally got her breath back.

Liz finally gathered up enough breath to say, "GAAH! Would you stop making fun of me and help me get this kid off me?" Aidan hadn't budged, largely due to the fact that he had passed out. Only as Liz began struggling again did he wake up. Apparently, Liz had kicked him pretty hard, because when he woke up, he said, "Ow! Careful around the tender spot!"

"You're sick," Liz said nastily.

"No, not sick, but definitely injured," Aidan remarked bemusedly as he got off Liz and stood up. He offered her a hand and she took it and got up. "Please accept my most sincere apologies. I'm terribly sorry that I landed on you after… never mind. I'm sorry."

Liz felt bad, looked at her feet and said, "You're sorry! I'm the one who kicked you so hard that you passed out!"

Aidan's eyes sparkled as he replied, "No, no, it's quite all right. It will heal… in a few years…" Liz blushed. "I will be fine," he continued. "Thank you." Liz suddenly realized that they were still holding hands. So did Aidan, and always the gentleman, he kissed her hand, then looked into her eyes. Liz smiled, then blushed again, a deep crimson red. She dropped his hand and muttered something incoherently just as Christian ran up and said gleefully, "Um, hi, I'm Christian," just to be polite. Then she whispered to Liz, "Ooh, tall, dark, and handsome, Liz, how nice." Liz blushed even more deeply— if that was possible— and didn't say anything.

Unfortunately, Sirius was standing nearby, and he overheard Christian's comment. "Why, thank you, Christian. I never knew you felt that way about me. Who are you going to the dance with?"

At this, Christian got a pained look on her face, probably from thinking about the dance and Lucius. Liz was simply annoyed by Sirius' habit of getting into everyone else's business. Allison was mad for obvious reasons. So at the exact same moment, Christian, Liz, and Allison all walked over to Sirius and slapped him as hard as they could.

"Ow!" Sirius said. "What was that for?"

Liz and Allison just rolled their eyes, and I'm sure Christian would have if she'd had eyes.

James was snickering in the background until Sirius went over and snapped, "Yeah, well, you can't tell me it hasn't happened to you."

James continued laughing and said, "Yeah, but _three at once?_ Come on, that's gotta be a new record."

Sirius glared at him (though he couldn't quite reach the evil death glare that all of the girls were so good at), but was prevented from killing James by a streak of gold light that flew past him about two inches from his head.

"AAH! What was that?!" Sirius shouted in alarm.

James started to laugh at him, but quickly stopped when the same thing happened to him. "Bloody Merlin! It's trying to kill me!"

"Too bad it didn't work," Christian laughed. Sirius was _pretty_ sure she was being sarcastic.

Even as she was saying this, more and more golden beams of light started to fly around the white space that they were in. It was at this moment that everyone began to notice where they were. The number of beams of light was steadily increasing, and in a short amount of time, there were so many that it was a wonder none of the students had gotten hit by one. But the beams seemed to have a life of their own. Whenever they came near the students, they would veer off in another direction at the last second. Mary reached out to touch one, and just let it hit against the palm of her hand. It gathered itself into a little sphere of light and just sat there for a second, then exploded in a little puff of light and harmless smoke that drifted away in swirling tendrils. Mary smiled.

As many more beams swirled around the nine teens, Allison slowly asked Aidan, "So, what exactly are you doing here? Have you been watching us this entire time?"

Aidan lowered his eyes and muttered, "Yes."

"So you just followed us up to the trophy room," Allison said disgustedly.

"Yes," Aidan said inarticulately, still avoiding eye contact. A beam flew past his head, but he didn't flinch.

"Why?"

"Why do you think?" Aidan said defensively. "I wanted to know what you eight were up to. You had all been acting very strangely. I did not even think that you Ear— ahem, sorry, that you _Brits_ could act so oddly. I had an idea of your behavior and your customs, and you just did not seem to be… well, none of you seemed to be normal," he finished, almost apologetically.

Sirius thought about this for a moment, then smiled and said, "Well, that's what we were aiming for, mate. Even our own classmates don't consider us norm—" But he was cut off by Allison's hand pushing him out of the way. "Hey! Ow! That—"

"Shut up," she said, never turning away from Aidan, even when a beam of light flew directly in front of her eyes. (This wasn't because she liked him; she just wanted to psych him out and get him kind of nervous. I'm sure you understand that she was pretty p.o.ed at him at the moment.)

"Anyway, Aidan," Allison continued. Her voice rose angrily with every syllable. "What were you saying? Oh yes. We were acting 'oddly.'" She smirked. "And that was why you decided to _follow us up to the trophy room_— you weren't even asked to go— _we don't even know who you are_— _we STILL DON'T_—_ then _you couldn't even_ HIDE FORM BLOODY FILCH for a few seconds_—_ you just HAD TO FOLLOW US IN HERE and get into even MORE of the business that wasn't bloody yours_—!" She took a deep breath and bellowed,_ "ARE YOU QUITE MAD?!"_

"Hey, I think she finally hates someone more than me!" Sirius said in the background, happy to have figured this out.

Aidan drew very close to Allison's face and got a very cold, angry look on his face. "I think," he said, his nose an inch away from Allison's, "you will find that it is very much my business. And if it's not now, it will be very soon."

Allison glared right back at him. With the scowl and the glare Aidan was giving her right now, she wasn't quite up to 'evil death glare' standards, but she did well enough, considering the circumstances.

"Oh really?" she asked sardonically. "And _why would that be?!" _She was nearly in hysterics now. "WHAT IS YOUR _PROBLEM?!" _she screamed. She said '_PROBLEM' _as if it had three syllables, like '_PERR-AHB-LUM.'_

Everyone else was staring at the two fighting like little children. Liz decided thay it was necessary for them to be aware of this fact.

"Hey," Liz said. "You two are fighting like little kids."

"I was _not_—" Aidan began hotly. However, at the moment in which he started his sentence, one of the golden beams of light that had been flying lazily around them came straight down on his head. "Ouch!" he said angrily, trying to brush the beam off his head. It had already disappeared, much in the same matter as the one that had touched Mary's hand.

James, with a rare burst of understanding, blurted out, "Hey! They're all doing that, now!" What he meant by this statement was that all of the beams of light were falling straight down now. Each individual beam would stop suddenly in midair, hang in the air for a second, and then drop straight down, like a missile.

Naturally, one of the worst things that could have happened at that moment was that the 'lights' would have 'gone out', as they had been when the nine students had entered this strange emptiness. So of course that's exactly what happened next.

"Oh, crap," came Liz's voice. One thing that was better this time of darkness than last, though, was the fact that the golden beams of light were still plummeting downwards. However, now, instead of 'plummeting,' they were sort of slowly drifting. These beams, which were becoming less frequent, gave off a softly glowing light, so the students were able to see each other whenever a beam drifted past one of them.

"Look, I can actually hold this one!" Mary said, and everyone looked at her.

Her face was softly glowing from the light of the small sphere she held cupped in her hands. It did nothing, just floated a few millimeters above her palms, pulsating gently.

"Mary, is it?" Aidan asked suddenly; everyone jumped, as everything had been completely silent, and also quite peaceful, what with golden beams falling like snow. She had introduced herself to him, but that had been quite a while ago, or so it seemed. "Yes, well, try to… try to throw that light. See what it does. Maybe you'll be able to… you know… form a door… a portal, I suppose… like you did before…" His voice trailed off. It was very easy to become drowsy in this place…

Mary lifted up her arm (slowly, I might add, as she was as drowsy as everyone else), and threw the little ball of light. It seemed to take an eternity to travel slowly through the dark space, and during that eternity, each of the nine students sat down… but suddenly the sphere of light seemed to hit against something and spread out slowly. The nine students waited, although all were dangerously close to falling asleep… The place where the sphere of light had hit formed itself into an arch shape, not unlike the one that had appeared in the trophy room…

A gold beam drifted down and touched Liz on the forehead. It faded out of sight instead of exploding like all the other ones had done earlier… Liz snapped to attention. She seemed to be the only one able to do so; Sirius was snoring, and that was the only sound she could hear from her fellow companions, except for the occasional rustle of movement. She moved over to the arch and inspected it. Just as the old one had been, it was ornately decorated. However, this one was made of a material that seemed like gold, although was a bit rough. Also, it was really only decorated on the top and very bottom. Like in the other arch, there was a curtain, but this one was long, white, and gauzy. Again, this curtain was blowing with an unseen and unfelt (at least by Liz) wind. Meanwhile, there were even fewer beams of light. It was almost totally dark again.

Liz peered into the depths of the arch, tried to see what lay beyond. Needless to say, she was unsuccessful. However, as she didn't see any other way of getting out of that endless dark void that they were in, she sighed, and decided that she would have to get her friends through. She supposed she would just drag each one over, throw them though, and follow when everyone else was through. She got up, sighed again, then felt around until she found someone. She began shaking them, to try and wake whomever it was up. The person did not stir.

"Oh Merlin," Liz said out loud to herself, mostly to calm her own nerves. "What if they're dead?" She began frantically shaking the person, and they gave a loud snort and turned over. It was James.

Liz exhaled loudly in frustration. Then, completely unexpectedly, she felt a hand on her shoulder. She gasped, whirled around and from the light of a passing beam of light, saw that it was Aidan.

"Oh, it's only you," she said with great relief.

"I'm happy to see you too," he said sarcastically, but with a smile on his face.

"Oh— I'm sorry— I didn't mean it like that," she finished lamely.

"I know," he said, still smiling. "I suppose you want help dragging your friends out of here?"

"Oh— yes— but— how did you know?" she asked, surprised.

His only answer was a very ominous, "I always know."

"Wha—"

"But your plan won't work. You don't know where that arch might spit them out. You could end up galaxies, universes, dimensions away."

"Oh— well— what should we do?" Liz asked, more than a little flustered. She was glad it was mostly dark, so that Aidan couldn't see the blush that had crept up her neck and across her face.

"Take then all though together, naturally," Aidan replied as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"Take them all— what? How?"

"Elizabeth."

"Ye— Yes."

"You're a witch."

"What? Hey!"

Aidan sighed. "You have attended Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry for almost six full years," he said, almost amusedly. "_Surely _you can think of something to do?"

"Of— of course I can!"

"Right then. I suggest you get to it."

Liz pulled out her wand— miraculously, it had remained in her pocket the whole time. How she had been so lucky, she had no idea… "All right then— _Wingardium Leviosa!" _she said, levitating all of the others. (They had learned how to levitate more than one object in the end of their sixth year.) She levitated the seen students through the portal, with herself and Aidan following closely behind.

**I told you not to read it! Well, if you did, yeah, I know you were disappointed, but that's okay. Obviously something is going to happen next chapter, they just went through the portal, so duh. Give me ideas on where they should go. What are we on now? Chapter 7? Well, we'll soon find out… Oh well, at least I had fun picking on Liz while I wrote this chapter… (cackle).**

**SYNOPSIS! Okay here's the promised summary. They find out that Aidan had followed them. They're in this place where it's alternately completely white or completely (or mostly) dark. I made it really obvious during this chapter that Liz and Aidan… yeah. Ever hear the song 'Sk8er Boi' by Avril Lavigne? Well there ya go. There are all these little beams of light. Allison and Aidan have a fight. Aidan starts to call the students, "Ear—" but catches himself and calls them Brits. Mary catches a beam of light, throws it, and it becomes another arch. Everyone except Liz and Aidan fall asleep, so the levitate everyone else through the arch and follow them. The End. Dun Dun Dun. Rejoice. Well, at least you didn't have to read the whole chapter. That should be something to rejoice about. The End for real this time. Well, of this chapter. **


	7. Deutsch and Bald Weirdos

**(AN: This A/N will be really quick, not like last chapter's, that was just to dissuade you from reading… anyway. I'm sorry this fic is turning out to be crap. If I write another one, it will be better… but please give me ideas as to what should happen. Thanks. On to chappy 7. Or should I say crappy 7… haha I am SOOO not funny.)**

**Disclaimer: Yeah, if I owned Harry Potter, Sirius would be alive and kicking. Enough said. Oh yeah but I did make up Aidan… so… HA! **

**Oh yeah there is a lot of German in this chapter, and my German is not entirely too wonderful, actually it's kind of unique. Also I made some of it up. Sue me. Sorry! (haha, Liz, im Deutschklasse, "Wer reitet auf der Sohn?" and "Punkte für Liz's Manchoff!")**

**Chapter… SEVEN!**

Liz tumbled through the arch, magically dragging all of her friends behind her with the help of Aidan. She tripped and fell to the ground, causing everyone to land hard on the ground. As soon as she was through, amazingly strong sunshine and a sudden, uncomfortable blast of heat washed over her. This, and possibly getting out of the ethereal world in which they had just been, caused everyone to wake up suddenly. All with the sole exception of Sirius, that is.

"First order of business," Liz said. Does everybody have their wands?"

Seven responses of 'yes' and one 'no' filled the air. "I don't have mine," Peter said nervously.

"Git," said Christian and Mary at the same time. They looked at each other and burst out laughing.

"Liz, Sirius has his wand," Remus said after seeing it poking out of his back pocket. Sirius. _Sirius,_" he called, trying to wake Sirius up.

"I wouldn't bother," James said, poking Sirius in the shoulder with his own wand. "He's out."

Sirius mumbled something about pants and turned over.

"Whatever," Liz said impatiently. Again, she was the first of the group to even attempt to assess the situation. "Where are we?"

"Yeah, ask us, because _we _would know," Christian said sarcastically.

"Well, I just thought—" Liz began haughtily.

"Yeah, we know," Christian said, smiling. "I was joking. Now what were you saying?"

"Yeah— well…" Liz said. "Basically what I wanna know is, where in the name of Happy Jack are we?"

"AAAUGH!" Mary screamed. "Now you've gotten it stuck in my head! Thanks a lot!"

But Liz wasn't paying any attention. She was looking around at the landscape. It was very, very flat, and almost as far as she could see in all directions, there was nothing but _sand. _Lots and lots of golden, sparkling sand. _Hmmm, _she thought, taking it all in. _This is what I always thought Egypt or somewhere would look like…_

The only discernible feature of the land was mountains, rising off in the far distance. The sky― a beautiful blue― was completely cloudless, and the blue seemed to go on forever. There was also a hazy smudge on the horizon that could have been a town or at least some kind of inhabited area, but it was much too far away to see. Then she looked directly up at the sky. She gasped in surprise at what she saw, and this caught the attention of Allison, Christian, and Mary. "What is it?" Allison asked.

"Look," Liz half-whispered. She pointed upwards. "There are _three suns_," she finished, half-disbelieving.

"Sweet!" said Mary, but she was drowned out by the exclamations of James, who thought that he had been the first to notice the multiple suns.

"Hey, look guys!" he squealed. "There are three suns! That's awesome!"

Mary and Christian exchanged a look that clearly said, _Git. _

Liz was absentmindedly talking to herself. "And if we _do _manage to travel that far— but we don't have water— we don't know how far it is— and we don't even know what it is—"

Quite suddenly, Sirius woke up. "GIVE ME BACK MY PANTS!" he shrieked, coming out of a dream as he sat up. Realizing that everyone was staring at him, he grinned sheepishly and stuttered, "Um— sorry— I— well— a dream— never mind."

James muttered something under his breath that bore a close resemblance to "Stupid bloody gay git."

Sirius heard and was quick to turn red and reply, "I am NOT gay! Nark!"

James sniggered and said sarcastically, "Riiighht." This was the final straw for Sirius. He lunged at James, almost getting him by the throat. However, seeing as how his reflexes weren't too good, James simply stepped aside, and Sirius flew past him and landed on his head.

"Oof!" he grunted as he hit the ground. "I think I broke my neck."

"Really?" Christian asked with mock excitement. "Check to make sure!"

Actually complying with her sarcastic request, he tenderly felt a spot on his neck. "OW!" he gasped loudly. "I think I really did. I'm gonna diiiieee!" He rolled over on the sand, preparing to pretend to die a dramatic death (say that ten times fast!). However, as soon as he rolled over, he yelled, "OUCH!" and sat up immediately, rubbing his backside.

"Well, that was a sucky fake death," James commented stupidly.

"No, no— look at that!" Sirius said in annoyance. He gestured to an object half-buried in the sand. It was about the color of dirty bronze, but blended in nicely with the golden sand. "It poked my back!"

Christian, Mary, and Allison sniggered.

Liz, however, was still standing off to the side, muttering to herself. "But _how long _it'll take―"

Meanwhile, the four Marauders and the three unoccupied girls were poking at the strange object, while Aidan stood off to the side, watching the little mob with interest, but keeping his distance. His arms were crossed and he was tapping his foot impatiently.

"What d'you reckon it is?" James asked, eyeing it with interest. No one had yet been brave― or naïve― enough to try and touch it. Well, except Sirius, because he was a git, but Allison had quickly slapped his hand away.

The little object, although still half-buried in sand, appeared to be a simple box. No decorations, no flourishes. Just a smooth, simple box. At first, it had appeared to be made of wood, but upon closer inspection, it was like nothing any of them had ever seen before. It was, as has been said before, the approximate color of dirty bronze, though maybe a little lighter. Probably the oddest thing about it was that it seemed to almost sparkle a little bit. _Although, _Christian thought as she looked at it, _maybe sparkle isn't really the right word. It's more of a― a glittery shine, or something. _Indeed, the box did seem to have a bit of an otherwordly aura of light, one that had nothing to do with any of the three hot suns blazing overhead.

Finally, Sirius could contain neither his curiosity nor his strange affection for shiny objects any longer.

"Please, _please _let's open it," he begged.

"Sirius, are you quite mad?" Mary asked, displaying a rare instance of common sense/sanity. "Who _knows _what that is? Or what's inside?"

Sirius's smile fell and he looked longingly at the box, saying, "Yeah, but it's so _shiny―_"

"Yeah, well, so is Snape's hair, but you're not about to play around with _that_, are you?" Mary asked.

Sirius's only reply was pretending to vomit.

Liz suddenly swiveled around to face the group. She stomped over and snapped, "Hello, Earth to you gits, but in case you haven't noticed, Christian doesn't have a face, we have an unexpected guest_―_" she gestured to Aidan "_―_we're in the middle of a _very _foreign desert, we have no idea where we are, and we're _God knows how many dimensions, universes, or macrocosms away from Europe!" _

Everyone, including Aidan, stared at Liz for about five minutes while she glared back at them. Finally Sirius spoke up.

"What's a― what's a macrocosm?" he asked somewhat tentatively. Then, hoping to lighten the mood, he grinned widely.

Liz stared at him, eyes wide, for a moment longer, then narrowed her eyes dangerously. She huffed angrily and turned away.

Sirius recognized the evil death gleam in Liz's eye and hastily tried to make it up to her. "Liz, it's― look, I'm― I'm a git, all right?"

Liz turned to him and looked him right in the eye. "Too right you are." She turned away and walked resolutely towards the larger group of people, which was standing around and discussing the mysterious object. "Now, what have we here?" she asked them as she drew nearer to them.

"We don't know," said Allison. "That would be why we haven't touched it yet."

"Oh," said Liz. "Right." She knelt down near the item and began to examine the box, which was about half the length of a notebook, and around two and a half inches tall. She didn't really notice anything different than the others had, until―

"Hey, what's that?" Mary asked. She pointed to a tiny, absolutely minuscule little symbol on the side of the box. Liz bent even closer to the box and investigated the little embellishment Mary had pointed to. It looked like a woman's face. _That's odd, _Liz thought. _That face looks extremely familiar… _

Everyone except Aidan had crowded around the box when Mary had pointed out the little symbol. He was still off a few yard away, looking extremely impatient. James looked up from the intense examination they were all giving it and said, "Bloody hell, we've got trouble. Um, guys…"

At this warning, everyone looked up. Approaching in the not-so-distant distance were what looked like four men on horses. As they came closer to the group, they were able to see that all four men were dark-skinned, bald, and wearing nothing but beige-colored pants that looked like they may have been animal skins. The pants came down to about the middle of their calves. The horses were all very dark brown, and extremely sweaty. They had no form of riding gear except for a blanket, which is what the men were sitting on.

The nine students stood up straight and faced the men, who were drawing ever closer.

"Should we try to talk to them?" Christian whispered anxiously.

"That may be a good idea," Remus said. "The way I see it, we're probably going to die either way, so why not at least try?"

Mary whispered sarcastically, "Thanks, Remus."

"Shh!"

They all stood up straight again. Liz decided to go for it and shouted, "Hello! Um… we come in peace!" However, she was rudely interrupted by Christian's whisper of, "We're not in Area 51, Liz! Don't talk to them like we're aliens!" She straightened up and bellowed, "HELLO! PLEASE DON'T KILL US! WE'RE NOT ALIENS! WE AREN'T EVEN ARMED! HELLL- OOOO! LOOK!" She waved her hands in the air. "NO WEAPONS! WE SWEAR! NOW IF WE COULD JUST GET A PLACE TO STAY FOR THE NIGHT―"

Allison grabbed her hands and hissed, "Are you insane?"

The men seemed to be having a discussion amongst themselves on their horses. Finally one looked up and shouted, "Halt! Wir kommen zu dir! Wir sind die Puelitzen!"

The four girls all looked at one another. Although many students had scoffed at the idea, all four girls had taken Language Studies in their 4th through 6th years. "Is it just me…" Allison said slowly, "or did they just speak _German?" _

"Well, at least we can understand them, sort of," said Christian. "But what does 'Puelitzen' mean?"

"I don't know," Liz replied. "What did they say again?"

"They said, 'Wir kommen zu dir, wir sind die Puelitzen," Mary supplied. "Which means something along the lines of, 'We'll come to you, we are the something.'"

"'Puelitzen' probably means 'police,' or something," Allison said thoughtfully.

"Ja, ja, wir sind die Puelitzen." The men were very, very close now, easily within earshot of the group. They rode a little bit faster the rest of the way to the area in which the group was standing, then stopped at about only three yards away.

"This is really creeping me out…" Mary murmured to Remus.

Suddenly, the man in front, leading the procession, gestured to James and said, "Nimmt das Junge!" Two of the men swung gracefully off their horses and started advancing on James.

"Guys!" he shouted, and sort of backed away slowly, eyes filled with fear. "What the―"

"Oh man," said Liz. "Oh man oh man oh man. They said, 'Take the boy.' They're taking James! We've gotta do something!"

James, having nowhere to run to, was quickly grabbed by the two men. They bound him with ropes rather easily, even though James was putting up something of a fight, and positioned him on the back of the horse on which the man who was neither the leader nor one of the men holding James was sitting.

Sirius, upon hearing Liz' statement, rushed over to the men and said, "Uh― no, that's probably not a good idea― we like our Jamsey, see― so if you'd just put him down, that would be bloody great―"

Mary pushed him aside and hissed, "Git! Haven't you noticed that they don't speak English?" Then she turned to the man who had been leading the procession on their way there and said in a very pleasant voice, "Nein, das ist nicht gut. Er ist mein Freunde. Wir brauchen er. Kannen wir er haben, bitte?"

The man looked down his nose at her and said, "Nein. Wir mussen er nehmen. Es tut mir leid. Aber kannt ihr mit wir kommen, ob willt ihr."

Mary smiled and held up one finger. "Ja. Danke. Eine Moment, bitte." She started walking back towards her friends.

Sirius leaned over to Liz. "What'd they say?"

Liz whispered back, "Well, Mary said that no, that's not good, that James is our friend and we need him. Then she asked the guy if we could have him back."

Sirius inquired further. "Then what'd _he_ say?"

Liz answered, "He said, no, sorry, we have to take him. You _all_ can come with us, though, if you want."

Sirius asked, "_Then _what?"

Mary reached them at that moment and answered his question. "Yes, thank you. One moment, please."

Sirius blinked and said, "Ah."

Christian, focusing on the matter at hand (wow! Imagine that! Christian focusing!), said, "There's no question. We have to go. We have to stay together. If we get split up, we're screwed. There's no way we can let James go by himself."

Liz whispered something into Christian's ear, smiled evilly, and looked expectantly at Christian. Christian blushed slightly, but quickly regained her composure. Off a few yards away, the leader of the strange men snapped, "Los geht's! Schnell!"

James, with a very wide-eyed, nervous expression on his face, nodded his head as vigorously as he could.

Liz said, "Allison, would you please tell them that we're coming with them?" While Allison turned around, stood up and said, "Ja, wir kommen mit Sie," Liz told the rest of the group, "Guys, it's probably not a good idea for any of us to speak unless spoken to. Even then we've gotta be absobloodylutely careful. Agreed?"

"Agreed," came the simultaneous cacophony of six voices. Aidan remained sulkily silent.

"Aidan?" Liz said. "Please just promise; we're going to need all the help we can get during this."

Aidan looked her right in the eyes for a moment, then looked at his feet and muttered, "Fine."

"All right, let's go then," Liz said wearily.

The eight students got up and trudged reluctantly towards James and the four strange men. Although traveling off into an alien land with four tribal-looking men was probably not a good idea, no one could think of anything better to do, and no one could think of any spell that would help them save James. They were, as Christian had put it, screwed. To the max.

"Ihr werdet verfallen uns," they were told by the leader. "Kommst du jetzt."

"Ja, wir kommen," Liz answered politely, although somewhat tiredly.

"Ihr musst wandern," the leader continued. "Sprecht bisschen. Erzahlen deine Freunden dass von."

"Did you guys hear that?" Christian asked her non-German speaking peers. "He said, "You'll follow us. Speak little. We have to walk." To the man she said timidly, "Ja, sie wissen."

Liz whispered to the students, "She said, yes, they know now."

"Kommt!"

The two men who had handled James swung themselves back onto their horses, and the four horses began to move. Already they were going too fast for the eight students to keep up. In desperation, Allison called out, "Langsamer, bitte!" which of course means, "Slower, please!"

The men made no visible sign that they had heard, but a moment later they slowed down. The eight students watched as the men whispered among themselves for a minute. Suddenly, three of the men, including the leader and the man carrying James, leapt off, riding at top speed. The remaining man looked extremely cross. He began to ride back to where the students were standing.

Sirius, Peter, and Christian all shouted, "JAMES!" at the exact same time. Sirius and Peter made as if to run off after the riders, who were receding farther and farther into the distance by the second. However, Remus grabbed each guy's shirt collar, and Mary grabbed Christian's, before they could go anywhere. "Are you mad?"

Sirius looked extremely crestfallen. "But… James…" his voice trailed off forlornly as he remembered the terrified expression James had worn as the riders moved off with him strapped precariously to a horse's rear end.

Meanwhile, the man on the horse that had remained with them had been watching all of this with a very amused expression. Exactly what about the situation he found so amusing, no one knew, or really wanted to ask. Finally, after surveying them with satisfaction for some time, he spoke. "Kommt mit." That was all. No explanation, no apology, just "Come with me."

He spoke again. "Ich gehe langsam. Aber musst du schnell gehen."

Christian whispered, "Guys, we've gotta walk fast. Jog, even. Let's go." And with that, they set off, the dark-skinned bald man keeping them moving at a quick pace. As they began to move, Remus saw Liz slip something into her robes.

About an hour later (no one knew for sure; Remus's watch had broken), they were still moving across the desert, though not nearly as quickly as they had been. The only water they had stopped for had been about a half-hour ago, and it hadn't even been water, it had been a silvery liquid that all of them had been scared to touch. So all eight of them were hot, tired, dusty, depressed, and extremely thirsty. If they didn't get water soon, they'd probably die, for real. This was on everyone's mind, except for Sirius's. All he could think about was James. His best friend, all alone save for some bald weirdos…

Meanwhile, Liz and Mary were discussing the fact that they seemed to be coming nearer to the 'hazy smudge on the horizon' that they had seen before. As they got closer and closer, it did indeed seem to be a town, or even a small city.

Suddenly their 'guide' spoke― something he hadn't done for almost the entire journey. "Wir sind eneigen hier."

Remus whispered to Mary, "What'd he say?"

She whispered back, "We're almost there."

Remus nodded.

It was true. They had been able to see what they were approaching for some time now, but as they finally reached the outskirts, it was more massive than they had ever imagined. There were at least four different levels of streets, platforms, sometimes overlapping. Ladders led to the platforms, and there were buildings, some nearly four stories high! That wouldn't have seemed entirely too impressive to the students, except for the fact that everything was made out of what appeared to be mud. People― all dark-skinned― were absolutely everywhere for as far into the city that they could see. Amazingly, even the women appeared to be completely bald. The city― because that's what it seemed to be, now― spread out in front of them seemingly to no end, for it extended well past the limits of their vision. Activity was everywhere, and it was so loud that one had to shout in order to be heard.

"Ah. Wir sind hier. Gut. Kommt mit." The man dismounted his horse and handed it off to a shirtless boy who appeared to be about the same age as the students. Like the men, he was dark and bald. The boy glanced in amazement at the eight. At the sight of Christian, he sucked his breath in sharply and stared. The man said, "Keveln, Sehen nicht. Nimmt mein Pferd. Jetzt!"

The boy drew his eyes away from the group and looked at the man. "Ja. Leid." He took the horse and led it off, farther into the city, where the crowd swelled to even greater numbers.

The man watched them go, then turned around to face the eight. He beckoned to them with one finger, then slipped off into the crowd. They were started to get some weird looks from the people around them, probably due to the fact that everyone around them was at least four shades darker than they were, and nobody else had hair. They stuck out like an elephant among mice.

"Wait up!" Sirius shouted, then started running. He just managed to catch a glimpse of the man entering one of the many building before Remus grabbed him again and said, "Sirius, you can't keep running off like a madman! Don't be a prat!"

"―some people just can't help it," Christian said with a grin.

"―if we lose you here we'll _never _bloody find you!" Remus continued.

Sirius shifted impatiently while Remus yelled. He said nothing in defense, and when Remus was done, he shouted "This way!" as he ran off yet again.

Remus shook his head, annoyed, but followed anyway.

Sirius reached the building that the man had entered. Fortunately it had been just up the 'street,' so his friends were able to follow him fairly easily.

After ducking and weaving through the thick crowd in their mad attempt to follow Sirius, the seven students finally caught up with him almost right after he entered the building. However, Remus, the first one to enter the building after Sirius, was unlucky enough to find that Sirius had come to a sudden halt just inside the doorway. He ran into him full-force.

"Oof! Remus, mate! Watch where I'm going!"

"Shut up, Sirius."

Mary was next. Unaware that Remus had stopped, and looking in the other direction, she ran into Remus in the same way that he had run into Sirius.

"AAH! Remus! Why'd you stop? I almost died!"

"Uh… sorry, Mary."

"It's all right! Ha, I don't actually bloody care!"

However, the end of the episode of clumsiness had not yet come. The pattern continued all the way through Christian, Liz, Allison, Peter, and Aidan.

Christian: "Ow! Mary! Must you _always _cut me off?"

Liz: "Christian, what's the— OOF! What the fu—"

Allison: "Whoa! Liz, what's bloody wrong with you?" Falls down.

Peter: "EEE!" Trips over air and goes flying.

Aidan: Trips over Peter and starts swearing at him in Celtic or whatever weird language he speaks.

Soon they had made a sort of horizontal eight-person pileup, not unlike the one that had occurred in the trophy room. However, their attentions were diverted from the painful, tangled up mess by the room they had just entered, which was about the size of a large classroom.

"Whoa," someone said.

Hanging from every wall were tapestries, tapestries with colors so bold— deep purples and shining golds and royal blues and deep greens and yellows and every other color you can think of, plus a few you can't— that it almost hurt to look at them. But the dozens of torch-bearing sconces attached to the wall around the room made it even worse. The light from the flames reflected of nearly every thread of every tapestry. Additionally, the room smelled strongly of incense, and it was very warm. The fumes of the incense were making everyone a bit tired, because there were no windows or visible ventilation systems to let some of the fumes out.

Along with the tapestries and the sconces were ornate rugs and carpets on the floor. They appeared to be made out of the same material as the tapestries.

There were at least six doorways in the room, each leading off to some unknown place. The man whom they had followed to the city noticed them. He was standing right next to one doorway, and as soon as he had caught the eye of the students, he beckoned to them, right before disappearing into the door he'd been standing by.

"Well, let's go!" Sirius said, and made as if to sprint off to the door.

"Sirius! Wait!" Remus shouted. Aidan sniffed temperamentally and rolled his eyes.

Sirius stopped just short of the door. "Come on," he pleaded.

_I've never seen him so dejected in my life, _Christian thought.

Mary caught Christian's eye and nodded. Then she looked at Liz, who shot her a look that said, _I know_.

"What if we never see James again?" Sirius asked them, his tone a bit more defensive now. "What if we _do _see him, but he's all mangled up and torn into little pieces by these people? What if they're going on a picnic and decided to have little _James_ sandwiches?" He was getting more and more hysterical with each syllable.

It was at that moment that everyone in the group realized just how deeply they were in this. At first it had seemed like a dream. A long, scary, very detailed dream, granted. But a dream nonetheless. Now one of their number was in real danger, and if they didn't act soon, there was no telling what would happen to James.

Remus thought all this and said, "All right, let's go." He set off towards the door. Sirius, glad to see that he wasn't alone, stepped through the door, closely followed by Remus. A look of terror at being separated from his Marauders crossed Peter's face, and he waddled through the doorway as fast as his extremely-slowly-moving legs would take him. The four girls were right behind. Finally, the only one left was Aidan. He looked at the doorway with an intense expression of dislike. A little spasm of dread crossed his face, but it passed too fast to be noticed. Finally, he stepped over the threshold to join his colleagues.


	8. The Smelly Smell that Smells Smelly

**A/N: Lo and behold, chappy eight has arrived. That last chapter was kind of weird. I hope I explained what they were saying in Deutsch well enough. Although I guess the vast majority of the people who read this speak Deutsch, to some extent. So yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well. Anyway. Ideas are appreciated greatly. Thanks. You rock meine Sockenfluffers. Um… yeah. On to chapter eight… **

**Oh crap! I have to put Elena in! Aw I just remembered! Ok, Elena, sorry… you'll be in soon, I promise… **

We last left our… um… heroes… as they followed an extremely foreign bald guy through a doorway. This doorway was in an exquisitely decorated room made of mud. The room was in a building, also made entirely of dried mud. The building was in a city made entirely of dried mud. The city was in a desert made entirely of… um… sand. The desert was in the middle of God knows where, and we're not going to discuss this any more because it's getting really old. Anyway, our main characters had just followed this man through a doorway. Coming right out of the room decorated with detailed tapestries, rugs, ornate sconces, and even some little sculptures and the like, they weren't really sure what to expect of wherever the doorway led. So when they had all stepped through… well, they were as confused as hell, actually.

The room, hall, well, whatever it was, it was very dark. It took almost a full minute for the students' eyes to adjust to the almost complete lack of light. Once they had regained full eyesight, they were astonished at the room into which they had just come. Actually, it was more of a crude hallway.

_Yes_, Liz thought, _a _very _crude hallway_.

There was almost no light in the hallway. The only source of light was the doorway through which they had just come. The area in which one walked was very narrow, and on the opposite side of the hallway (the side that they were facing when they had first walked through the door) was what appeared to be an unoccupied jail cell.

"Wha— what— we aren't—" Christian began. "There's no way—"

The crude corridor, comprised of grayish, slightly crumbling blocks, seemed to be quite lengthy. The row of tiny cell blocks extended for as far as any of the students could see.

"Er—…" Liz said. "You aren't— um— Sie sind nicht— Wir sind nicht im dieser gehen!"

"Yeah! She's right! We're _not_ going!" Mary said defiantly, only to remember a few moments later that this guy didn't speak English. "I mean… um… stimmt!" she tried. "Sie ist stimmt! Wir nicht geh—"

The bald man got a huge, evil, absolutely malicious smile on his face.

"Think he's related to Malfoy?" Allison whispered to Christian. Christian sniggered.

The man heard Christian, and whipped his head around to face her. "Du werde nicht bald froh bist," he said. "Ja," he continued, sneering happily. "Ihr geht in dieser. Ja, ihr werde gehen. Heh heh." And he started doing that annoying little evil-laugh thing.

Sirius slid over to the nearest German-speaker (who happened to be Allison) and said very very quietly, "What did the big git say?"

Allison replied even more quietly, 'You won't be happy for long. You _are _going in there. Yeah, you'll go in there."

"Nein! Wir nicht gehen! Wir sind verlassen! Nein!" Liz screamed, almost hysterical now. ("No! We aren't going! We're leaving! No!")

The guy rolled his eyes. "Hut dein Mou," he said, which basically means "Shut up." He began advancing on the students, causing them to back up. Unfortunately, this was exactly what he had wanted and expected them to do. The students had absolutely nowhere to go. The corridor was so narrow that their bald captor's bulk filled up the entire space. They didn't want to continue going backwards, but unfortunately, the bald guy had just pulled a large and lethal-looking… well, some kind of killing thingy out of his apparently rather large pocket.

"Ob geht ihr nicht, denn sterbt ihr," he said. Horribly, he was grinning broadly, which generally isn't normal for a person that's just said, "If you don't go, then you're gonna die," and is probably going to have to carry out that not-so-thinly-veiled death threat. His expansive smile revealed his canine teeth, which wasn't so weird, except that his canine teeth were a horribly exaggerated, pointy, and yes, lethal-looking rendition of the students' own.

"Jetzt GEH!" he shouted. ("Now GO!") The little party was almost at the end of the corridor now, the place with the least amount of light and worst smell. The smell, which had been steadily increasing as they receded farther and farther into the darkness, was that of mold, dust, decaying flesh, and probably some rodent crap was mixed in there as well.

"Ihr," he said, grabbing Liz and coincidentally, Aidan, "geht im hier." (You two go in here.") He threw them into a tiny cell, slammed the door shut, and started tying a heavy, thick-looking piece of twine or something around the bars of the cell, which appeared to be bamboo-like.

Sirius, appalled by this display of brutality, blurted out, "Bloody hell! You can't just— just— manhandle them like that!"

The man simply laughed, grabbed Sirius and Mary, and said, "Dann ihr kannt im hier gehen." ("Then you two can go in here.") He tossed them effortlessly into a tiny cell, right next to Liz and Aidan, who were trying to get up off the disgusting floor of the cell.

Remus, Peter, Christian and Allison were the only four left. After quickly tying the same thick, shiny twine around Sirius and Mary's cell bars, the bald man advanced on the four, who were slowly backing away, even though they knew that there was nowhere to run. The man grabbed Christian and Peter, flung them into the cell next to Mary and Sirius, tied their cell door, and them quickly did the same to Remus and Allison.

Their captor surveyed them with satisfaction. "Jezt, verlassen nicht," he smiled, laughing evilly. He smiled once more and then retreated down the long hall. The students could just barely see the door into which he disappeared.

"What did he say?" Sirius asked, still lying on the floor after being thrown into the cell.

"He said—…" Mary began, her breath catching on a slight cough. "He said, 'Now, don't you leave." She scowled, then shouted down the hall, "WE WON'T! GIT!"

"Mary! Are you stupid?" Christian asked, meaning that it was stupid to scream insults at the very people who held their lives in their hands.

"Oh, you're right," Mary said. "They don't speak English." She cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted, "WIR WERDE NICHT! BLÖDASCH!"

Christian gaped. "Idiot! Way to call the guy a dumbass!"

Meanwhile, Liz and Aidan had successfully disentangled themselves, but were sitting on the floor. Sirius and Mary were still just lying there, not bothering to get up. The same went for Remus and Allison, but Christian was seething, yet again. But before she could start yelling…

"Is everyone okay?" Liz asked, concerned. She was rubbing her arm. "I think my arm's hurt."

"I think my leg is hurt, too," said Mary. She poked a spot on her calf and winced in pain. "Yes, it hurts when I do this." She poked it again to show Liz. "Ow." A pause. Poke. "Ow." Another pause. "Yep, that definitely hurts," she concluded.

"Badly?" Liz asked.

"Nah." Poke. "Ow."

Nobody else was hurt, although every one of the students had a splitting headache and an overwhelming desire to sleep. They remained fairly quiet, speaking only in low voices and not really talking about anything important. Even Christian had decided that yelling at Peter was a waste of energy, so she satisfied herself by giving him a detailed play-by-play of what his death would be if he came within a foot and a half of her. First, she explained, she would give him a long, slow, and painful death by letting him bleed to death. She said that she might even go the way of Wesley's threat in The Princess Bride: she would cut off his nose, hands, gouge out his eyes, etc. etc. Then, when he was close to death, she would chop his body into about fourteen million little pieces and feed the pieces to the rat-like creatures that lurked around the cells. The students had noticed these animals: larger than normal rats, some about the size of a house cat, they prowled the corridors when none of the bald people were around. No rat had really been brave enough to try and confront any of the prisoners yet, but oftentimes one of the students would find themselves staring into a seemingly disembodied pair of gleaming black eyes. For Mary, more than half of the time it was just Sirius being a git, but for the others, it was truly frightening.

The only thing that really happened for a while was that they were brought some food by a different unfamiliar man, small, beady-eyed, skittish. Heck, he practically could've been Peter's father. He brought some coarse bread and the same silvery liquid that the students had encountered and shied away from in the desert. The man hurriedly slid one small woven tray in each cell, then hurried away without a word.

No one moved for a moment. There was a heavy feeling of lethargy about the group, probably brought about by despair.

"Well," Remus said after a minute. "D'you reckon we should try it?"

"'We're all going to die anyway, so why not?'" Allison quoted, shaking the hair out of her eyes. "Weren't you the one that said that, Remus?"

He sighed, a blatant sign of his exhaustion. "Yeah."

Allison cautiously reached over to the bowl that contained the liquid. She hesitated for a second, but then seemed to make up her mind to drink it. She took a sip.

Everyone waited silently and tensely, including Allison. After a few minutes of suspense, Sirius asked, "Are you laive?"

She straightened up a bit and said sarcastically, "No."

At her words, there was something of a mad rush for the bowls: well, as much of a mad rush could be exerted from eight tired, smelly, dirty, smelly, hungry, miserable, smelly, lethargic and WHEW did I mention smelly prisoners entombed in four tiny, dirty, dank, and almost completely dark cells. And they were smelly. So it wasn't really a mad rush, it was more of a "You're closest to the bowl. Hand it to me, will you?" type thing.

After everyone had drunk from the bowl placed in their cell and eaten a little bit of the coarse bread stuff that had been brought to them, they were feeling considerably better, if not actually good. Seeing as how they had had nothing to eat or drink for— how long had it been? —two days, a week, eighteen million years, however long it had been— they had all been feeling a sense of slowly wasting away. The food refreshed them a little bit. There was also the matter of the silvery liquid they had finally been brave enough to drink. Far from what their expectations had been, it was cool, refreshing. A little bit thicker than water, but not too bad. It was also a little bit sweeter than water, but that was mainly the aftertaste. However, new problems arose after about 20 minutes.

"I _have to go to the bathroom!" _Sirius moaned piteously.

"Well, you'll just have to bloody hold it, then!" Mary said crossly. Since she was the one actually _in_ the cell with Sirius, she was determined that Sirius should contain himself until she was far, far away.

"_But I have to go bloody bad!"_ Sirius went on.

Liz spoke up. "Um… guys, I think there's a kind of… um... chamber-hole thing… in the back of the cell…" she pointed to a dark hole near the back wall of the cell that no one could see the contents of. She looked thoroughly disgusted, as did everyone else upon hearing about this new 'accommodation.'

"Ah! Thank Merlin!" Sirius said. "Um, Mary, please turn around for a second…"

She rolled her eyes as she turned around. "You're disgusting."

Meanwhile, Liz and Aidan had been kind of avoiding each other, at least as much is as possible when you are confined to a five by five-foot area. Oh, sure, there had been the occasional, "Please hand me that bowl, Elizabeth," or, "Um, Aidan, you're kind of crushing my foot, and I wasn't gonna tell you, but there's no circulation. In my foot. That you're… um… sitting on."

He had shifted serenely, looking at her the whole time. "Oh. I'm sorry."

Nothing more extreme than that.

However, Liz had caught Aidan looking at her when he thought she wasn't paying attention. She was glad it was almost pitch-black in the cell, because if it had been any lighter, Aidan surely would have seen her great number of blushes.

"Elizabeth… _Elizabeth_…" Liz was startled out of her thoughts by Aidan's voice and his hand waving around in her face. When he realized that he had her attention, he opened his mouth as if to say something, but was interrupted by shouts coming from down the hall.

"_Warum erzahle du mich nicht?"_ a voice roared from a short distance away. "WO SIND SIE, DU IDIOT!" ("Why didn't you tell me? Where are they, you idiot?")

"Wart― Hier― Sie sind hier―" came the nervous reply. ("Waitherethey are here") Heavy footsteps, more than two pairs, came thudding in the direction of their cells. As the figures drew nearer, the students were able to see them more clearly, and what they saw didn't really make them feel very optimistic.


	9. One Unfortunate Character Becomes Bald

**AN: OK, I know it has been a REALLY long time since I updated, but I've been preoccupied. Well not really. I j****ust… uh… haven't updated :_fake smile_: _:runs away_: Yeah, anyway, I haven't written any new chapters for this fic in a while, but _sooomeone _cough_liz_cough was like (say this in a mocking chipmunk voice), "I updated… laxgoalie updated… now you update… preferably the German weirdo one." And I was like, "Um… German weirdos? Oh yeah, I remember that… vaguely… wait no I don't. AAH CONFUSION" and then I ran into a wall. Two months later I woke up in the hospital with 27 stitches and three broken legs, and that's why I haven't updated. Um… really.**

**Chapter Nine: When German Weirdos Attack**

Where did we leave off? FLASHBACK! **Macho** **announcer voice: **_A BLAST FROM THE PAST! _**Little kids screaming: **_YAYYYYY!_**Author: **AAAH WHAT AM I DOING? STOP IT, BRAIN! I'M TRYING TO WRITE A CHAPTER NINE HERE! **Macho announcer voice: **_AND THEN SHE RAN INTO A WALL AND DIED. And thus, Chapter Nine will begin. Um… written by the author's ghost. _**Author: **_SA-WEET! THIS ROCKS! (runs over to little kids, who are still screaming) _I— _(points to self)_ _am a ghost and _you— _(points to kids) are _not! **Kids: **(scream louder)**Macho Announcer voice: **But then she woke up and realized that it was all a dream and that if she didn't start writing soon, she really _would_ be dead because everyone would kill her viciously. Also she needed a disclaimer. But because she owns Harry Potter, she doesn't really need one, she was just kidding. **Author:** NO! NO, YOU IDIOT! I DON'T OWN HARRY POTTER! NOW THOSE BLOODY COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT GUYS WILL COME AFTER ME! AAAH! **Macho Announcer voice:** And then a huge swarm of tiny copyright infringement goblins swarmed onto her and devoured that copyright-infringing author. Now she really _was _dead and she also received the prestigious award for Longest and Most Pointless Disclaimer Ever That's Not Even a Real Disclaimer Because All That Happened Was the Macho Announcer Voice Said That She Owned Harry Potter and Then She Got Eaten By Copyright Infringement Goblins.

**Now presenting Chapter Nine, for real! (Elevator music start _now_) Chapter Nine: When German Weirdos and Fat People Attack!**

Okay, seriously, where did we leave off? Our characters were sitting forlornly in nasty little cells, waiting to see who was coming up the hallway. And I quote (from last chapter):

'"Elizabeth… _Elizabeth_…" Liz was startled out of her thoughts by Aidan's voice and his hand waving around in her face. When he realized that he had her attention, he opened his mouth as if to say something, but was interrupted by shouts coming from down the hall.

"_Warum erzahle du mich nicht?"_ a voice roared from a short distance away. "WO SIND SIE, DU IDIOT!"

"Wart— Hier— Sie sind hier—" came the nervous reply. Heavy footsteps, more than two pairs, came thudding in the direction of their cells. As the figures drew nearer, the students were able to see them more clearly, and what they saw didn't really make them feel very optimistic.'

Well that's fun.

Anyway, as this figure drew nearer, the students got more and more frightened. And when they finally saw the guy who had been shouting, they were really, _really_…

Confused.

He smiled at them.

"What _is_ this?" Sirius whispered to Mary. She shrugged.

"Warum sine ihr im dieser Zellen?" the man asked, still smiling. ("Why are you all in these cells?")

As if it had been their choice. Like they were gonna answer, "Oh, yeah, well, you see, we wanted to go on vacation, and we'd just heard the rave reviews about this place— and oh! what wonderful room service, and we're just loving the flea-infested hay, and the giant evil man-eating rats of death—" No. They were definitely _not _happy.

What _really_ surprised the students was that this man's smile was not unkind. However, it was large. _Very_ large. And his smile was directly in proportion to the rest of him.

His description is as follows:

It can be put no other way than _obese_. This guy had obviously gone on the Big Mac diet, and added in a few thousand funnel cakes. Like every other person on the planet, he had no hair.

In addition to this, he had the appearance of royalty. Although he wore no crown, he _did_ wear many jewels and rich red robes— almost reminiscent of—

"Santa!" Sirius burst out, then clapped his hand over his mouth as Mary tried to do the same thing but only succeeded in slapping Sirius. Hard.

"OW!"

"What is _wrong_ with you?" she hissed furiously.

"Sorry," he whispered back, rubbing his face.

"Was war dass?" the fat man asked, noticing that they had spoken, however briefly.

"Es— es tut mir leid— ich—" Mary stuttered, attempting to apologize.

"Bitte los unser gehen," Liz said weakly. ("Please let us go.")

The man threw back his head and laughed. Seeing this, his subjects looked at one another, then uncertainly started laughing with him.

"Ja, meiner Kinder!" he said jovially, looking at her. "Du und deiner Freundennen kannen verlassen— bald."

An indignant look crossed Liz's face when the man called her a child, but it quickly cleared.

"What did he say?" Remus asked Allison.

"He said, 'Yes, my child, you and your friends can leave— soon, '" Allison answered.

"We can leave!" Remus whispered happily.

"Hate to rain on your parade, Remus, but he said 'soon,'" Allison replied. "Which means _not now._"

Remus' joy quickly deflated. Allison thought she could hear the sound of a balloon's air being let out.

But it wasn't a balloon. I mean, come on, Peter was there.

"Whoops, sorry," came Peter's voice from the next cell. "That was me." And indeed, the smell was just reaching the noses of the other seven students.

_My Merlin!_ Allison thought, holding her nose and waving at the air in front of her. _That is truly revolting!_ She was startled out of her thoughts by the sound of the big fat guy starting to laugh. He said, "Machtet etwas sterben?" ("Did something die?")

"Thanks for that," Remus said to Peter.

Peter cringed.

Meanwhile, King Fat Guy had moved to where Christian and Peter were holed up together.

"Jetzt," he said to his guards, "Nimmt dieser zwei erste. Dann dieser—" he pointed to Remus and Allison— "dann dieser—" he pointed to Sirius and Mary— "dann dieser." He gestured towards Liz and Aidan.

"And… he said _what_?" Sirius asked Mary.

"He said to take Christian and Peter first, then Remus and Alli, then you and me, then Liz and Aidan."

"Ah."

And the guards did just that. Unlocking the doors of each of the cells, each guard took a hold of one student. Fortunately, under the instruction of King I Like Pie, the guards were gentle with the students.

They were guided out of the dungeon, but instead of returning to the room from which they had come, they were led to a different room. This room was circular, and had a Round Table, much like the one Liz and Mary had learned about in World Mythology class. Many banners and tapestries were hung on the walls, and the ceiling was in the shape of a distinct dome. King Super Size It sat down in one of the chairs and beckoned for the students to sit. He told the guards to leave.

The students hesitantly drew out chairs and sat down. King Food Is Good stared at them the whole time, smiling slightly. The students stared back warily.

After a few moments, he sighed and spoke. "Jetzt brauche ich Information. Erste: wo sine ihr?" ("I need information. First: Who are you?")

Christian swallowed, then said, "Um… Die Jungen sprechen keine Deutsch. Sprechen… sprechen Sie Englesh?" ("Um… the guys don't speak German. Do you speak English?")

King Deep Fat Fry's eyes grew wide, and he looked at the eight teens. He seemed a tiny bit frightened. However, he leaned in towards them and said quietly, "Tell no one. English be a tongue lost to most, and forbidden to all. Kzalor over this land I may be, but that will not save me from death if I be found speaking it. But I must inquire, why did'st thou not ask before?"

The students stared at him, dumbfounded. His English was almost _flawless_ (though a bit old-fashioned), and he seemed so… harmless! Well, unless he sat on you. _That_ wouldn't be harmless. That would be extremely painful. But anyway…

"You mean, all this time…" Sirius stood up, and his chair clattered behind him as it fell. "All this time, you and your little— your bloody little _henchmen_ out there spoke English—" his voice rose a little— "And no one cared to tell us?"

"You must understand, my young liege, we knew not!" said King Never Saw A Treadmill. "In addition to this, most of the people of Northern Icaea know no language save their own: Deutscha. And four of you seem to know a bit of Deutscha as well," he added, smiling again.

"Northern Icaea," Liz said to Mary, who was sitting next to her. "And he says they speak _Deutscha,_ not Deutsch."

"Northern Icaea… that must be the country or whatever," Mary said quietly to Liz. "But what bloody planet are we on?"

They were interrupted by King Twenty-five Chins. "What say'st thou, children?" he asked, looking directly at them.

Liz and Mary looked at each other, then at him.

"We have a question," they chorused.

King Mmm Food raised his eyebrows. "Oh?" he asked. "Speak your query, then."

Taking that as an "Okay, ask away", Liz immediately asked, "What planet are we on?"

"We, my friend," King Clogged Arteries replied proudly, "be on Planet Noæh." (Noæh is pronounced 'No-ee-uh.')

Stares from the students. Stares all around.

King Heart Attack Just Waiting to Happen sighed and said, "Yes, well, I suppose that that name means nothing to you. Let me recount to you a tale… a tale of this land, evil deeds, and why you are here. You see, we have been expecting you."

At this, a collective gasp went around the group.

"This is _exactly _like in those science fiction books," Sirius whispered proudly to Christian. "You know, 'we come in peace.' 'Well, we've been expecting you.' _Just_ like in the books." She stared at him for a second, then asked with a straight face, "You can read?"

"Well," King Watch My Jowls Quiver continued, "Not exactly _you_ eight."

"Nine!" Sirius said defensively, turning his attention from Christian's mean statement to King Size Candy Bar. "There are nine!"

"What?" King Kindred of Elephants asked. "I see only eight. There be nine?" Then to himself, he muttered, "Yes, yes, that would be right…" Then he said to the students, "The ninth! Where be the ninth?"

"He was taken by your bloody kidnappers!" Sirius said a bit too shrilly. However, King Buns of Lard simply looked at him, as if considering him. (Not in a perverted way. I promise, King Mmm Food is _not_ a pedophile.)

"I see," he said to Sirius after a moment. "And, prithee, why was your companion taken?"

Sirius stared, confused.

What did 'prithee' mean?

Christian, realizing that Sirius' lack of a functioning brain was impeding his thought process, answered for him. "We don't know. Your… your people were leading us here, and they just kind of rode off without him. We haven't seen him since," she added wearily, suddenly feeling very tired.

"Well, we'll simply have to bring the young man back to us, shan't we?" King of a Thousand Tons said merrily, chins a-quiverin'.

Sirius was at a loss for words. Why was this guy being so _nice_? Hadn't _he_ been the one who ordered them captured and James taken and the others thrown into cells and not given anything worth eating and then screamed down the hall at his servant gits and sounded like a bloody tyrant and then summoned them here probably to tell them that they were gonna die and—

"Sirius!" Remus hissed in his ear. "Sit down." He did.

King Carbs-a-Lot yanked a green silk-like ribbon that was hanging from the ceiling. A bell rang a distance away, and almost immediately two spear-bearing, tattooed, loin-cloth-wearing men ran in. They knelt down, heads bowed.

Christian leaned over to Liz and Mary and whispered, "Mansluts!"

The two servants asked simultaneously, "Yes, lord?"

King Calories A-Countin' said, "Dieser Jungen erzähle mich dass seiner Freund ist misgär. Bitte bringt er hier. Geht jetzt."

Once the servants left, King Bouncing Buns said, "I told them that—"

"—that the boy told you his friend was missing and that they should bring him here," Allison said. "Yeah, we know."

Suddenly the doors flew open with a resounding _crash_! The same two servants as before led a bedraggled, tired, and _bald_ boy in, then immediately dropped him and left.

James.

Sirius jumped up again and shouted, "JAMES! WHAT THE BLOODY HELL HAPPENED TO YOU? ARE YOU ALIVE? WHERE'VE YOU BLOODY BEEN? ARE YOU BLOODY ALIVE? WHERE'S YOUR BLOODY HAIR?"

James sat down, slowly, exhaustedly. For a moment he said nothing. Then he slowly looked at Sirius, looked at everyone else, felt his hairless head, and said quite stoutly, "WTF, mate?"

Sirius laughed, happy to know that at least some of his old friend was back, and said, "We don't know either, actually."

King Sausage Legs said, "Yes, young man, where hast thou been?"

James looked at him. "Why do you talk all funn—"

Remus made an odd noise, interrupting James and preventing him from stupidly insulting King Overblown Orca. James looked at Remus questioningly, and Remus shook his head slightly. Apparently James figured it out, because he hesitated only a few more seconds, then continued, "… I don't know. The only thing I remember is that… they gave me…" He squinted as if trying to remember. "They gave me water or something… and then I fell asleep… and I woke up once, when they were cutting off my hair, but I couldn't move. My hair is gone! Why'd they do that?"

King Fat Pie said, "Yes, yes, we'll have to take care of that on you other children also…"

"Wait, you mean you're gonna chop off our hair, too?" Mary asked incredulously.

"Well, of course," King Chubby Chub Chub said. "Hair is forbidden."

"_WHAT?"_ Liz exclaimed. "WHY?"

"It is most sacred, of course," answered King Buckets o' Lard as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Why else would all of our tapestries in this palace be woven of hair?"

"Like… animal hair, right?" Christian asked queasily, not really wanting to hear the answer.

"HA HA HA!" King Belly o' Jelly laughed uproariously. "Of course not! Human hair is _most _sacred."

"Wait… so… this is _all _human hair?" Remus asked, pointing to the tapestries on the wall."

"Naturally. So be the chairs which thou sitst upon."

A simultaneous "AAAH!" rose from the students as each one jumped out of his or her chair. Peter squealed loudly.

King Fatty McFat Pie looked at them in confusion. "Be the sacred hair frightening to my young lieges?"

"Um, it's just that… we're not really used to it, that's all," Remus said.

"Well, it only makes sense that the sacred traditions which thou holdst where thou com'st from are different than ours of Noæh. After all, you are from a very… _very_ long distance away. Perhaps even a very distant _time_."

At this, the nine students began to look at each other uneasily.

"But," continued King Big 'n' Not Sexy, "thou hast not given me a chance to finish— nor begin, for that matter— my tale. If you would." He pointed to the floor, obviously gesturing for them to sit. They did so.

King Can't Walk Up A Flight Of Stairs opened his mouth to begin, but Mary interrupted, "Wait!"

King In Desperate Need of Gastric Bypass Surgery said, "Yes, my child?"

She muttered, "I'm not a child," but no one heard except Christian. Then, more loudly, she asked bluntly, "What the heck is your name?"

"I," he began proudly, "be Bythaes. Kzalor Bythaes. Kzalor be equivalent to what other countries call 'Emperor' or 'Ruler.' Now may'st I begin?" (Kzalor Bythaes is pronounced 'Kzahloor Bytheez.')

"Um, yeah, sure," Mary said uncertainly.

"Thank'st thou forever." He took a deep breath, then plunged into his tale.

"Now, in the beginning, there was nothing. Then Kal, mightiest of gods, said, 'Let there be Light.' And there was still nothing, but now you could see it."

"Uh… Kzalor Bythaes?" Sirius said, pronouncing the words with difficulty. "Can we just skip to the part where _we_ come in?"

Although Bythaes looked slightly put out, he said, "Certainly. Let us skip to a time about 60 revolutions ago."

"What's a… what's a revolution?" Remus asked.

"The time it take'st this planet to orbit once around the sun."

"Oh, so it's like a year!" James burst out, pleased with himself.

"I suppose. Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to be continuing my tale now."

James muttered something about no one appreciating his genius, but stayed quiet.

"Yes, thanks be to thee, kind sir," Bythaes said with a hint of sarcasm. But before James could do anything but look outraged, he continued, "Yes, now, where were we? About 60 revolutions ago— years, if'st thou please.

"Now, Noæh was revered as the most peaceful planet in the galaxy. There was general peace among the many kingdoms of Noæh, and it had always been a well-run, orderly planet. Certainly, some were better off than others, but no one went home hungry, and all were able to live with a fair amount of luxury.

"However, about this time, sixty revolutions ago, Planet Noæh began to fall into discord. Though ere this time there had been minor fighting among the smaller kingdoms, it had always been settled within a month or two. But now, Noæh was becoming— well, children, worse. Larger fights were beginning to break out among the more powerful kingdoms, and famine was spreading planet-wide. The harmonious peace that had once been Noæh's pride was no more.

"Many searched for an answer. Scholars and alchemists, priests and warriors, rulers and farmers— all looked for the answer that had'st to be found. Then, on one cold winter morning, a poet by the name of Hraldin came across a bit of parchment in the gypsy Gyara's archives. It bore only this poem:

'When kingdoms split  
as earth and sky  
have previously done, 

And man kills man  
And demons fly  
And once-strong warriors run;

When hope seems gone  
Then know'est thou  
The nine will surely come.

But when'st they 'rive  
Noæh, know!  
Their powers great and well;

For each has one  
And when combined  
Not one can e'er be fell.'"

The students stood spellbound, captivated by the steady rhythm of Bythaes' voice.

He shook them out of it by asking, "Do any of thee know'est what it means?" Without waiting for an answer, he explained, "Gyara wrote that when the world begins to come undone, something will come to help. Well, _nine_ somethings, to be exact. But there is also a warning. These nine beings will each have a great power— a power that all people should'st be wary of, for this power could destroy them." He sighed. "That was nearly fifty years ago, when'st this parchment was found. Gyara wrote it nearly twenty years _ere_ that date— ten years before the kingdoms began to fall apart."

The students stared at him. "And this applies to us… how?" Remus asked.

"Thou hast not yet figured it out?" the Kzalor asked in surprise. Looking at the nine heads shaking 'no,' he took a deep breath and said, "We believe that _you_ be those nine, and that you be here to help us."

The students stared. Again.

**So, what did you think? Wanna know what _I_ think? 'Course ya do. _I_ think that the plot is finally going somewhere. Slowly, I'll concede, but it's getting there. I'm really happy because Liz was like, "UPDATE!" again, and now I finally did! (Haha, Liz, just kidding!) Both stories, in fact. Well there ya go. Happy now? If not, too bad. I _laugh_ at your pain! HA HA HA! And how 'bout my _mad_ poetry skills? Yes I did write that myself. I'm so proud because it actually RHYMES! Go me! **

**Oh yeah and one more thing: What do you guys think of King Bythaes? Kzalor, King, whatever, you get my point. Is he obnoxious, annoying, funny, stupid, or just not really believable? Suggestions as to how to make 'my' (stay away, stupid copyright goblins!) characters more believable are greatly appreciated. Have a nice life! **


	10. They Discover Something About Themselves

**Chapter Ten hath arriveth! And all that good stuff.**

**I _know_ you're happy. Don't lie.**

**Haha just kidding! I really have nothing else to say, except this:**

**EEEEEEEMANGSHFJHGFHFRMNUFEJH! AI YAI YAI YAI YAI YAI!**

**Now that that's been said…**

**I present to you… Chapter 10.200050409438382288½!**

"I can't believe this!" Sirius yelled, jumping on his bed. "This is bloody awesome!"

"They gave you too much coffee," Liz muttered darkly, sitting cross-legged on her own bed. Christian, Allison and Mary were sitting on her bed as well.

You may be wondering when Sirius got a bed, and who on earth (…or… Northern Icaea) gave him caffeine, for God's sake. Who would be thick enough to give Sirius anything that would increase his massive amount of hyperactivity?

But… (_Psycho_ theme start now)

Even worse…

They had given Mary coffee too! AAAAH!

But then Liz and Remus had drugged her using this weird intoxicating fruit that was in fruit bowls that were all over the room. The effect had basically brought her back to neutral.

Yes, I am aware of how confused you are right now. Let me explain.

After Kzalor Bythaes had given each and every student a heart attack (by telling them that they were the 'chosen' or whatever), his guard people had escorted them― _escorted!_ No lethal weapons pointed at them― to a beautifully furnished room. It truly _was_ amazing. First they had been treated like the innards of a chipmunk, and suddenly here they were, being looked upon as honored guests.

The nine beds were arranged in a circular shape in which all of the heads of the beds were pointed towards the middle of the circle. By each bed was a small nightstand bearing a wooden bowl laden with fruit and a small candle. In the middle of the circle of beds was another table, which bore only a single piece of parchment. None of the students had touched it yet, as Kzalor Bythaes had not given them specific instructions as to what to do with it.

The entire room was a circular shape; large, with burning sconces on the wall every few feet. Green and gold tapestries hung from the walls, but these were not made of hair. Nor was anything else in the room. It seemed that the Kzlaor had taken into account the students' preference for materials other than hair. The high ceiling made the room a bit echoey.

Sirius was still jumping on his bed and screaming about how it was bloody awesome. "I love this! King Bythaes really did a bloody good job!"

James answered, "I 'gree, mate!"

Meanwhile, the girls were having a discussion of their own.

"This place makes me a little nervous," Christian said slowly. "No windows, only two doors― one of which only has chamber pots behind it―" For indeed, there were no windows in the room. Only two doors were present. One led to the hall. The other led to a room with many shelves, all of which contained extremely fancy, jewel-encrusted _chamber pots_.

"Same here," Mary said. "Makes me a little nervous… Makes me wonder exactly why they're keeping us here…"

The four girls sat in silence, thinking.

"But now can I _pllleeeaaasse_ go jump on the bed?" Mary broke in, still slightly hyper. Well, more hyper than usual, anyway.

Three simultaneous "NO!'s" came at her.

"OK, OK! YOU DON'T HAVE TO YELL! THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO NEED FOR YELLING IN THIS SITUATION!"

"So why are _you_ yelling?"

"BECAUSE I LIKE TOOOOOOOOOO!" And with that mad declaration of complete insanity, she sprang up and ran over to where Sirius was still jumping on the bed, and pushed him off. When he hit the floor, she laughed maniacally, then started to jump. (Not on Sirius, on the bed.) Sirius proceeded to begin a war that involved shoving the other person off of the bed, then getting back up and getting thrown off again.

The three somewhat more (but not really) sane girls stared in amazement, wondering how anyone could be so amazingly hyper, then turned back to their conversation. However, they didn't really have much more to say, and so sat there in silence.

After about six minutes of just sitting there, Liz stood up on her bed without a word. She jumped from bed to bed over to where Sirius and Mary were attempting to kill each other, and immediately joined in the fight. Sirius and Mary stared at her for a second, surprised that she would participate in such an immature activity, but quickly got over it and started trying to kill her too.

Christian looked at Allie.

"She's cracked."

"Knew it was gonna get to her sometime or other."

"Oh Merlin. She's cracked."

Aidan, who had been sitting as far away as possible from everyone, shook his head.

Liz, however, was having fun. She didn't care. She picked up a pillow― gasp!― and hit Mary over the head with it. She then screamed at the top of her lungs, "MY NAME IS INIGO MONTOYA! YOU KILLED MY FATHER! PREPARE TO DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIE!" An all-out pillow fight began. James and Christian jumped right in. Allison was a little more hesitant― God knows someone could die in a pillow fight with this bunch― but she finally realized that she didn't care who died, as long as it wasn't her. Even Remus joined in eventually. The only two who remained by themselves were Aidan (that poopsicle) and Peter.

Naturally, at the exact moment when the pillow fight was at its peak, a guard walked in.

Feathers were flying, pillows were flying, blankets were flying, and, yes, people were flying. It was completely impossible to see, probably due to the fact that the concentration of feathers was higher than the concentration of breathable gases in the air at that moment.

Additionally, nothing could be heard except for the sound of people screaming. Loudly.

And then there's this guard.

He stared, dumbfounded, at the masses of screaming children and feathers. He listened, astounded, to the sounds of people being attacked with pillows screaming. He felt, amazed, for the hilt of his small dagger, tied around his waist, ready to join the fight with an object slightly more lethal than a pillow.

_Oh, wait,_ he thought. _Can't do that. Kzalor Bythaes wants them alive._

Except that it was in German and all, you know, but I figured that the language in which I write his thoughts doesn't really matter.

Anyway.

The guard knew he had to find a way to get their attention. So he did what he did best. Well, besides killing people. He yelled.

"ACHTUNG!"

At that exact moment, everything stopped. The feathers that had been suspended in midair floated serenely to the ground. They covered _everything_.

"Whoa," Sirius said quietly. It was like a freaking winter wonderland. Everything was white, completely obscured by feathers. However, before he could stare in amazement for _too_ long, he breathed a feather up his nose and started sneezing.

The guard paid no attention. Clearing his throat, he proclaimed, "Kzalor Bythaes möchtet sie sehen jetzt." He immediately left.

"Eh?" Sirius asked Christian.

"He said that Kzalor Bythaes wants to see us now."

"Eh."

And indeed, just then, Bythaes entered the room. He took one look at the feather-covered area and burst out laughing. When he finally stopped, after about two minutes, he helped himself to a fruit from one of the bowls and asked, "Hast thou lookest at the parchment yet?"

Liz, although she felt ridiculous covered in feathers, answered, "No."

"I see. Well, make certain that thou do'est so. Thou will'st be fully engaged on the morrow. Remember," he continued, emphasizing this, "Read'st thou it together, and try'st to unlock its meaning." With that, he left.

"Well, that was short and pointless," Sirius said. "Kind of like Peter."

"What did he mean by 'having a busy day tomorrow?'" Allie wondered.

"Nuh-uh, he didn't say that!" Sirius interrupted. "He said 'fully engaged on the morrow.' HE said nothing about being busy _or_ it being tomorrow!" Sirius paused. "AAH! He said 'engaged'! We all have to get married!"

"Sirius, you're an idiot," Mary said matter-of-factly.

"Shut your airhole," said Liz impatiently to Sirius.

"I don't know," Christian said, continuing their conversation from before. "I guess he's gonna put us to work or something."

"I hope we don't have to clean this up," James said forlornly, gesturing to the massive amounts of feathers and pillows.

"If that is the task he assigns us," Aidan said suddenly from the other side of the room, "I can assure you that I will not be participating!"

"Oh, stop being so poopy," Sirius said.

Aidan gave him the evil death stare. Sirius blew a raspberry.

"SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP!" Mary screamed. There was a sudden silence in the room.

James leaned over to Remus and whispered, "I think I just peed myself."

Remus whispered back, "Ew. Go away."

"Annnnnnnnnnnnyway," Mary continued, "I think we should read the parchment now."

"I second," said Christian and Liz at the same time.

"I third," said Allison.

"I seventeen millionth!" Sirius shouted gleefully.

"Well, in that case…" Mary said. She retrieved the parchment from the table, then unrolled it. Just as she was about to begin reading, Liz said, "Aidan, Peter. Come here. You need to be here with us too." They grudgingly got up from their places by the wall.

Everyone was gathered, sitting on three of the nine beds. Mary began:

"It looks like Kzlaor Bythaes wrote this. It says: 'To our distinguished visitors: Hraldin found'st more than just that one poem in Gyara's archives. This be another poem that may help'st thou. This be the exact parchment on which the poem was found.'"

The parchment writing was fading but readable. It was decorated with pictures of moons and stars, trees and water, runes and the like.

Mary continued, "OK, guys, here's the poem.

"'When the ending of the worlds draws near,  
And all hope seems misplaced,  
The Nine will come. All must prepare.  
So tarry not. Make haste!

The Nine: they need our weapons not!  
For they've weapons enough:  
Their Powers own: They each wield one.  
But first they'll find rebuff.

These powers great must be descried  
By the Nine themselves.  
So here a list of Powers lies:  
Use it, Nine. Fare well.

But ere the Powers be laid out,  
You must know where to search.  
Lookest thou where jewels may lay,  
Or where a hawk might perch.'" 

Mary paused. "So… what are we looking for?"

Christian said, "Sounds like we each have a power… we'll know which power is ours by finding something."

Remus asked, "We have to find… what? 'Where jewels might lay, or where a hawk might perch.' What has jewels _and _a hawk?"

James piped up, "A jewelry box… made of branches!" Pleased with himself, he smiled broadly.

Remus stared at him. "Yeah, James. That's it. Now you can go look for that by yourself."

James crossed his arms and scowled.

"Seriously, does anyone have _any _ideas?" Remus asked the group.

"I met a falconer once," Mary said randomly. "He was obsessed with his stupid bird. Which, by the way, tried to gnaw my arm off."

"Like the axe murderer under your bed?" Christian asked sardonically. Mary had once had a run-in with an axe murderer who had tried to gnaw her arm off.

"Actually, yes."

"That's _it!"_ Liz said suddenly, jumping up. "That's _it!_ You're exactly right, Merwin!"

"YES!" Mary said happily, and then, "I am?"

"Yes!" Liz said excitedly. "What you said about the falconer-- falcons _perch_ on the falconer's wrist!"

"OH MY GOD, YOU'RE RIGHT!" Mary shouted dramatically. She paused. "I still don't get it."

"And jewels may lay there-- like, if you're wearing a bracelet!"

"OH MY GOD, YOU'RE RIGHT!" Christian, Allie, and Mary all screamed at the same time.

"My ears are bleeding!" complained Sirius.

"You think _that's_ bad, you obviously haven't heard James sing," whispered Remus.

"And-- THE MOON!" Liz shouted again, mostly to herself.

"YAY! THE MOON!" Christian and Mary shouted sarcastically, having no idea what Liz was talking about.

"No, you idiots," Liz said. I completely forgot to tell you guys, but I found a little scar-type thingy on my wrist-- looked a bloody lot like a moon!"

"Oh, I get it," Allison said slowly.

"The way we find out what our… _powers_… are…" Christian said.

"… Is to look at our wrists!" Mary finished up, happy that she had actually gotten something for once. "I get it. There will be a little… mark or something…"

"We'll have to refer to the poem, also, I assume," Remus said.

"Yes," Liz answered. "First we've got to see what everyone has on their wrists… just go around and say it, I guess…"

"I've got an odd kind of blob-looking thing," Sirius said, peering at his inside left wrist.

"Oh, that's helpful, Sirius," said James sarcastically.

"Well, you see if you can do any bloody better!" Sirius said hotly.

James leaned over. "Looks like… eyes or somethin' to me," he said.

"Yeah, it does," said Remus.

Sirius scowled.

Meanwhile, James had moved on to discerning his. "Mine's a question mark," he said matter-of-factly.

"You sure?" Christian asked.

"Yeah, it's really obvious," James answered.

"Wow! James just used a word with more than two syllables!" exclaimed Remus, acting surprised.

"Shut your face and tell us what you've got on your wrist, Remus."

"Um… lines. _Swirly_ lines."

"Very descriptive."

"Well, that's what it is!" Remus replied indignantly.

"What have you got, guys?" Mary asked, referring to Liz, Christian and Allie.

"I've got a moon, remember?" Liz answered.

"I've got a… blob," Christian said.

"Wow, Christian. That was profound."

"I know. Deep."

"Mine's a… mouth?" Allison said, voice rising in question.

"I have a fish," Mary said. "Sahh-WEET!"

"Wormtail, what do you have?" James asked Peter.

"I have… I have… I have… I have… I… I… I… I… I… I…"

"JUST SPIT IT OUT ALREADY!"

"A cat face!" Peter shrieked, trembling. God only knows _why_ he was trembling.

"Aidan, what do you have?" Liz asked him.

He glanced at his wrist, then answered, "Nothing."

"What? Let me see," Liz said, disbelieving. But just as Aidan had said, there was nothing there.

"OK, finish reading the poem, Merv," Christian said.

Mary cleared her throat and said,

"'First of Powers dire and vast  
Is gift of all tongues strange.  
Marked only by the mouth of Words,  
Revered by king and mage.'" 

"Allie, that must be you!" Liz exclaimed. "'Marked only by the mouth of Words…' You have a mouth mark thing…. It's you!"

"So she has the power to…" Sirius began thoughtfully. "Lick people?"

"_What?"_ Christian asked.

"What in Merlin's name are you _talking_ about?" Mary asked.

"Well, it said 'many tongues,' and--" Sirius started.

"It means the ability to speak any language, you idiot," Allison said.

"Hey, that's awesome!" Liz said. "But what's that part about 'revered by king and mage?'"

"It probably just means that even kings envy it, or something," Remus said.

"That _is_ pretty cool," Allison said, smiling distractedly. "I like it." Then to Mary, she said, "Keep reading, Merwin."

"Ahem," Mary began. "The next verse says:

"The power of divinity  
Is his with mark of eyes.  
Premonitions come. From him  
There can be kept no lies." 

"It's Sirius!" she burst out. "He has the eyes!"

"Sweet!" said Sirius. "Wait, what can I do?"

"You can apparently get premonitions," said Christian as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Which it kind of was.

"Oooohhhhh," said Sirius.

"I have to admit, that _is _pretty cool," said Allie.

"Yeah," Remus agreed. "On to the next verse…"

Mary read,

"The one with Lines that twist and flow  
Holds wind to his command.  
The winds will blow as he desires,  
Or spring up from his hand." 

"That must be me!" Remus said. "I've got the stupid swirly lines. I can control wind!"

"Lucky," said Sirius.

"Oh, stuff it," said Remus.

Mary cleared her throat and began reading. Everyone listened intently-- no one wanted to miss what his or her power was.

"'One power is flame: steady and bright.  
The one with mark on hand  
Wields power over light of fire:  
To twist to own demand.'" 

"Who could that be?" James wondered aloud.

"I don't know, who has a flame mark?" Liz asked.

No one answered.

"Well, whose mark have we not been able to figure out?" Christian asked. After waiting a few seconds, she finally remembered that she didn't know what her own was. "Mine! Maybe that's mine! Look, it-- yeah! It's in the shape of a flame!" And indeed, it was a flame. "That's bloody awesome! Controlling fire. Sounds like I can't create it out of nothing, but I can… like… command it! Go on, Merv!"

Mary continued,

"'The mark of question and query  
Discloses who it be  
That bears the gift of persuasion,  
Aided by subtlety.'" 

"It's me!" James said. "I've got a question mark. Now, explain to me what it means…"

"Um, it sounds to me like you have the ability to persuade people-- bend them to your will," Remus said.

"Also, the poem says that you'll be even more persuasive if you're subtle," Allison clarified.

"I don't know how you guys can understand that poem like that…" James muttered under his breath. "All I got was that line about a question mark…"

"That's interesting," Mary said.

"Very," added Liz.

"Good power," they said together to James.

"Now, the next verse goes like this," Mary said.

"'The crescent found in dark'ning sky  
Tells who this one might be.  
To bring total darkness, or lift the night  
And in the dark to see.'" 

"That one's obvious," Christian began.

"No, it's really not," James interrupted.

"The crescent in the sky," Christian continued, ignoring James, "Is the moon." And that's on Liz's wrist."

"So she can… make it really dark," Mary said thoughtfully. "Or she can sort of… expand the moonlight, and make it really bright."

"And she can see in the dark," Allison added.

"Liz, that's awesome!" Mary said.

"Seriously!" Christian put in. "You like… control the moonlight!"

"I guess," Liz said, a smile growing on her face. She thought it was cool too.

"The next verse reads:

'Aquatics are this one's prime strength:  
Bending water to her will.  
It moves wherever she desires  
Through air, on ground or hill.'" 

Mary paused. "I've got a fish mark, think it could be me?"

"Probably," Liz said. "That would make the most sense."

"Does anything make sense here?" James muttered, but no one heard him.

"So you can do what?" Christian asked. "Basically shape water?"

"I think so."

"That's cool," said Sirius. "And it sounds like you can even move it around in midair, that's neat."

"Yeah!" She was happy.

"Hey, I have a question," Liz said. "Who doesn't know what their power is yet?"

Aidan looked at her. "Me."

"And me!" Peter squeaked.

"OK, just wondering," Liz said. "Keep reading, Merwin, please."

"OK.

'One of the Nine appears to have  
No power, good or ill.  
However, invisibility  
Is his to use at will.'" 

"It's Aidan," Liz said. He slowly turned towards her and raised one eyebrow. "Oh?"

"Well, you don't have mark," Liz said. Her stomach had some butterflies in it, but she didn't know why. Trying to ignore them, she swallowed and said to him, "It looks like you don't have a power. But you obviously do. You can become invisible at will."

Aidan looked mildly pleased with this. "Good. Continue reading."

Mary glared at him, offended by his self-chauvinistic tone. But, wanting to find out what Peter's power was, she began reading.

"'The last of Powers Nine is marked  
By feline whiskered front.  
This one can create a feline stench  
Aided by a strong grunt.'" 

She immediately burst out laughing, as did the other girls and Remus.

"Why are they laughing?" Sirius asked James, bewildered. "I don't get it!"

Christian managed to gasp out, "_Cat… farts!"_ before dissolving into laughter again.

"What?"

"That's Peter's power," Liz said. "Cat farts!"

"Are you _serious_?"

"Yeah!"

"Nuh-uh!"

"Yeah! It says that if he grunts, he'll be able to create a feline stench!"

"Merlin! That would kill off quite a few people!"

"I can't effing believe this! Cat farts!"

Meanwhile, Peter was looking slightly disgruntled. He had, after all, gotten the worst power… if one could call something that they did on a regular basis a _power_…

Once the laughter had died down, the students began to discuss what was going to happen now.

"Well, Bythaes said we'd be busy tomorrow… maybe it has something to do with our powers," Remus said.

"Yeah, and maybe it doesn't, Moony," James said. "I mean, does he even know about our power… thingies?"

"Well, he's the one that gave us the parchment," Liz said.

"So he probably knows about them," Christian concluded.

"Know what I think?" Mary asked.

"Usually," answered Christian.

"Shut up," Mary retorted with a smile. "Seriously, I think we need to practice using our newfound… uh… skills."

"Wow. She actually made sense!" Sirius said in disbelief to no one in particular.

"That's a good idea," said Liz. "I don't think it's too late, do you think we should start now?"

"No time like the present," said Remus.

Everyone stared at him for saying such a 'guidance-counselor'-esque statement.

"What?" he asked. "I saw it on a poster once."

"Let's just begin," Sirius said, rolling his eyes.

**Author's note: Don't even say it. Detailed, long, and excruciatingly boring, right? And I know my poetry sucks, but… watch me _not care._ **

**Sorry. I'll try to do better next time :) I just needed to get their powers out there. Oh yeah, and thanks to laxgoalie for helping me figure out the powers after I lost the list. Reviews are greatly appreciated… duh. Until next chappy…**


	11. Since You're SO NATURALLY GIFTED!

**Haha, Liz, this is like your big chapter. Hehe.**

**Mmm. I have nothing else to say. Nada. Nothing. So I shall begin now…**

**Now…**

**RIGHT NOW…**

**Come on brain, you can turn on any time now… oh God… Liz or Christian must have borrowed my brain cell for the day. Crap. Well this chapter will just be some mindless babbling then, I suppose. Fun stuff. F-U-N-N stuff.**

**Like that.**

**Ok I really am starting now…**

**Unless the disclaimer interrupts me. So no, copyright Nazis, I do not own Harry Potter. I do, however, own a large piece of felt and some Chuck Taylors. So there! spits on them I WIN!**

So they'd decided that now would be a good time to practice using their new powers.

It was fun.

Christian had discovered that she could create and hold in her palm a small flame, and was having a wonderful time setting Peter on fire, extinguishing the flames, then setting him on fire again. Well, she was, anyway, until…

_Flashback to five minutes ago…_

"This is awesome!" Christian shouted gleefully as she set Peter on fire once more. _Foosh_.

Peter got a disgruntled look on his face.

Christian set him on fire again. _Foosh._ "I love this!" she exclaimed. James snickered at the sight of Peter's hair on fire.

"Now he's flaming both physically _and_ metaphorically," Alli whispered to Liz and Mary. They all snickered as well.

Christian held out her hand once more, prepared to set Peter on fire again. She raised her hand — created a flame — prepared to light him — and —

He let one rip.

PHTBPHTBPHTBPHTBPHTBPHTB!

And as everyone knows, when flame meets fuel — well, the effects can be devastating.

_FOOOOOOOOSH!_

"AAAAAAAAH!" Christian screamed. Her hair was singed around the front, and if she'd had a face, it would have been covered in soot.

Peter sort of half-grinned, but his delighted expression was quickly replaced by terror at the sight of Christian. Even though she had no face with which to express emotions, it was easy to see that she was seething.

Peter saw this.

Peter ran away.

Peter tripped.

Peter stumbled to his feet.

Peter continued running away.

Everyone else laughed at Christian and Peter.

Christian was just about to start screaming at everyone when Mary hit her in the face with a small blast of water and laughed hysterically.

_End flashback_

So basically, everyone was chasing each other around, trying to injure each other with their powers. Well, except Aidan and Peter, of course. Peter was busy hiding, and apparently so was Aidan, as he was nowhere to be seen.

Liz noticed this, and realized that there was absolutely no way that Aidan's disappearance could be in any way a good thing.

Suddenly she felt a hand on her shoulder. She swiveled around. Naturally, there was no one there — or so it seemed at first.

Aidan.

Evidently, he had figured out how to become invisible.

"What do you —" she began, but she was cut off by Aidan's hand over her mouth.

"Quiet," he hissed.

"What?" Although she was curious as to what Aidan wanted, Liz was not surprised that he was acting strange. Aidan generally _was_ mysterious and kind of sullen, anyway.

"I said _quiet,_" he repeated. "Please. I must speak with you… alone."

Liz was having serious reservations about this, but she let the invisible hand on her arm lead her to the chamber pot room anyway. No one noticed when, seemingly alone, she slipped inside. Besides, going to the bathroom wasn't really attention-grabbing anyway…

While she waited for Aidan to close the door, Liz looked around at her surroundings. She had been in the chamber pot room before, of course, but she had not noticed how extravagant some of the chamber pots were. The room was basically made of stone, with wooden shelves harboring many different chamber pots. The pots ranged in design everywhere from mud-brown clay to golden with many precious stones.

_What a waste of money,_ Liz thought to herself, disgusted. Although, she realized, the disgusted feeling may have been caused by the fact that she was standing in a nine by seven-foot room filled with chamber pots

Then, wandering towards the back of the room where some of the more fancy chamber pots lay, she noticed something behind a shelf. Cut into the stone wall, not deep, was a tiny etching. It was a circle, and it held nine circles inside of it, arranged around the edge of the larger circle. The smaller circles each had some kind of a picture or something in it. However, as the stone was crumbling slightly, Liz could not make out what the pictures might be. There was also a small written message. It read, "Totus mos intereo, vel vir." Liz could not read it, of course. She did, however, recognize it vaguely as Latin.

"Ahem."

Liz turned around, immediately forgetting about what she had just seen. Aidan had just appeared right in front of her. He gave her a strange look that she could not decipher.

"What?" she repeated. "What do you want to talk about?"

"I… I think that we should leave," Aidan said slowly, choosing his words carefully. "I feel that it is no longer safe to remain."

"Leave?" Liz asked. "You want to _leave_? Where would we go? Why isn't it safe? _What_ isn't safe?"

"I just… feel that it is not so," Aidan continued, not looking at her.

"And who do you mean by 'we'?" Liz asked. "And what do you mean, you don't _feel that it is_—"

"Everyone," Aidan interrupted, answering the 'who' question. "Although I certainly wouldn't mind leaving behind that _Sirius_. I don't like him."

Liz raised an eyebrow.

"And I just — have an extremely apprehensive feeling about — about all of this."

Liz raised her other eyebrow.

"All of what?"

"All of — _everything_!" Aidan said loudly, throwing his hands up in the air. "Have none of you noticed? This is far too suspicious a situation! Elizabeth, we traveled through a completely random — _portal_— to Merlin knows where —"

"You were uninvited, I might add —"

"— We were locked in the grimiest dungeon I have ever been in —"

"You were in a dungeon before this?"

He glared at her, but continued nevertheless. "Then suddenly, this — this _Kzalor_ — takes us to a beautiful room with all the amenities, _locks us in it_, tells us we're special, and leaves!"

"Well, since you obviously know everything, do tell: what are we going to do about it?" Liz shouted, eyes blazing. Who did he think he was to tell her — tell her what she should do —

"I DON'T KNOW!" Aidan shouted. "ALL I KNOW IS THAT WE ARE IN DANGER AND _YOU,_ ELIZABETH, ARE NOT BEING CAUTIOUS!"

"WELL AREN'T YOU THE SMART ONE!" Liz shouted back. "ALWAYS KNOW WHAT TO DO! WHO, AIDAN, WHO MADE _YOU_ THE LEADER?"

"I COULD ASK YOU THE SAME THING!" Aidan roared.

"WELL DON'T _YOU_ JUST KNOW _EVERYTHING!"_ Liz bellowed back; unnoticed by either of them, the door had been pushed open by Sirius and all six of the other students were standing by the door, staring at the two sparring students.

"MORE THAN YOU DO, AT ANY RATE!"

"WELL I GUESS YOU SHOULD JUST GO ON BY YOURSELF, THEN, SINCE YOU'RE _SO NATURALLY GIFTED!_"

"MAYBE I WILL!" Aidan retorted. "SINCE YOU OBVIOUSLY KNOW _EVERYTHING_, OH ALL-SEEING ELIZ —"

"GO ON, THEN!" Liz gave him the evil death stare and stomped out of the room.

Aidan stared after her for a minute, then followed, shaking his head. Liz, who had gone to where Christian, Alli and Mary were standing together, purposefully turned away from him.

"You know," Aidan said from across the room, "When we all die, you can't say I didn't warn you."

Liz ignored him.

About … eh, two hours later, everyone was asleep.

OK, no one was really asleep.

Naturally, Alli, Christian, Liz, and Mary were talking quietly, sitting cross-legged in a circle on Alli's bed. Sirius and James were quietly thinking of new ways to torture Aidan. Peter was just trying to fall asleep, obviously unsuccessfully. Remus was lying in his bed, staring at the ceiling, pretending to be asleep. After what Aidan had said, he was beginning to see that side of the situation, but he wasn't going to say anything about it… not just yet. And Aidan… Aidan was wondering to himself why everyone hated him.

Meanwhile, the girls (well, all except Peter) were talking about Aidan's outburst from before. It was, as Alli put so well, "Completely ridiculous!"

"What a douchbag," Mary said idly.

"He's such a git!" Christian said. "I mean, come on. 'I just don't … _feeeeeeeel_ … that it is right,'" she said with an exaggerated, mocking tone. The other girls laughed.

"I know," Liz said. "Stupid — git —"

"Yeah, we know," Alli said consolingly.

"But that does bring up an interesting question," Christian said. "Why are we here, and how long until we leave?"

"And _why_," Mary added. "I want to know _why_ we're here …"

"Yeah, honestly," Alli added. "_Why_ we can't leave…"

"I think we should talk to Bythaes again," Christian suggested, and the others all agreed.

"Yeah, me — " Mary began, but then she stopped in midsentence and cocked her head to one side.

The other three girls stared at her.

"Mary," Liz asked with a sigh, "Did you get distracted by something shiny again?"

"No," Mary answered. "Shhh."

"Why? What's the — " Christian began, but she was interrupted by both Alli and Liz, who now heard the sound as well.

It was a slight scuffling, and it seemed to be coming from right outside the door that led to the hallway.

"That _can't_ be good," Liz whispered.

There was also a very, very slight clanking, as if of metal against metal veeeerry softly.

By that time, Sirius, James, Remus and Aidan had all heard it as well.

"What's that?" Sirius asked, and was immediately greeted with eight "Shhh's!"

Then, all of a sudden, it got very, very quiet.

The students waited with baited breath. No one moved. No one breathed.

And the door burst open.

Light spilled from the hallway as tens, dozens (was it possible that _hundreds_?) of men with spears ran into the room.

"EEEE!" That was, of course, Peter.

In the resulting chaos, Liz was only able to reach blindly for a familiar person. She managed to latch onto Mary, who said, "This'll be fun!"

Liz sort of half-rolled her eyes, half-chuckled. Leave it to the Merv to turn a near-death situation into "This'll be fun!" But there was no time for speculation at that moment. Large men with pointy objects were currently invading the room. She said to Mary, "Tell the others to — tell them to go to the chamber pot room thing! Go!" Mary hurried off without a word and Liz went in the opposite direction so that she could do the same thing.

She managed to find only Alli, Peter, James, and Remus. Hoping that Mary had found Christian and Sirius, Liz told them each to go to the room, then hurried off herself. She forced her way through the growing, chaotic mass of soldiers and finally arrived at her destination. However, before Liz could open the door, a soldier took hold of her. She kicked him where the sun don't shine and hurriedly let herself into the room.

Alli, Peter, James and Remus were waiting there, as she had told them. A few moments later, the door opened again. Everyone tensed, but it was only Christian, Sirius and Mary.

There was a moment of silence, and then Christian burst out, "WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?"

"I don't know," Remus said, breathing heavily. "Why did they — why — I'm confused!"

An intense banging on the door started up at that moment.

"They know we're in here!" Sirius shouted. "What are we gonna do?"

"We'll have to fight them!" Remus said. "There's nothing else we _can_ do! Besides, maybe with our — you know — our powers…"

"Are you kidding?" James asked, for once the voice of reason. "All any of us can do so far is set Wormtail on fire, and that's not exactly gonna help against these narks, is it?"

The thumping persisted. It was steadily growing more concentrated.

"This is all my fault," Liz said, sliding down the wall.

"WHAT?" Christian, Alli and Mar all exclaimed at the same time.

"Get up, you big loser!" Christian said with a smile, helping her up.

"No, it was me, I didn't listen to Aidan," Liz said.

"Oh please, that git?" Alli asked, rolling her eyes.

"Yes, that git," said a disembodied voice right behind her.

"AAAAAH!" she screamed. Aidan had just appeared out of nowhere.

No one had even realized he was gone. Liz snickered at this.

"It's okay, Alli, I think he's a git too," said Sirius.

Aidan turned around to face Sirius very slowly. "Really," he said approaching him.

Sirius looked him straight in the eye and said, "Yes."

"We DON'T HAVE TIME TO ARGUE ABOUT THIS RIGHT NOW!" Mary bellowed. Indeed, the banging against the door was almost deafening now.

Aidan looked at Sirius and shoved him hard against the wall.

"Hey, you —" Sirius began as he got off the wall.

Even as Sirius began to threaten Aidan, something stirred in Liz's memory. That spot on the wall —

"That's IT!"

She ran over to the wall and located the insignia that she had seen before.

"I found this before, guys, maybe it's important, what is it?"

Sirius and Aidan shot once last dirty look towards each other, then followed the rest of the group, who were now gathered around Liz and the wall.

"Hmm," Remus said. "_'Totus mos intereo, vel vir._' Latin, if I'm not mistaken."

"Hey, Alli, can you read that?" Remus asked.

She nodded. "Probably." After looking at it for a minute, she said carefully, "All must die… even the heroes."

"That's all it says?" James asked. "Well _that's_ motivational."

The banging got louder, and a few spear points were now showing through the door.

"I think it's a door," Remus said vaguely. "Look —" And indeed, the mortar between the bricks seemed to be cracked in certain places, although it wasn't very noticeable. It _did_ look like a door, though a small one. It was rectangular and about four feet tall.

"We have to get out of here!" Peter cried. "Look at the door!" More and more spear points were showing, and the door was beginning to crumble.

"How do we open it?" James asked.

"Um… move the blocks?"

This of course did not work, and the attempt was abandoned after only about a minute and a half.

"A password! I bet there's a password!"

"Let's all say the Latin thing!"

"In Latin or English?"

"Uh… Latin!"

"Are you kidding? I don't know Latin!"

"English, then! Everyone, on three! One… two… three…"

Nine voices said simultaneously, "All must die, even the heroes."

Nothing happened. Well, for the first ten seconds, anyway. Then suddenly the block of stone began to just — move out of the wall. It almost crushed Sirius, who jumped out at the last second. There was a great grinding sound, and the stone stopped moving. It revealed a hole, basically. The students could not see what it was, because it was completely pitch black.

The door was crumbling away in great quantities now.

"Come one guys, we have to decide!" Alli said. The wall or — or them!" and she pointed towards the door. Lots of shouting cam from behind it.

"I choose the wall," said Sirius, and he ran into the hole without a second thought.

"Well _that_ was intelligent!" said Christian sarcastically.

"I'm going too," said James. He ran into the hole, ducking to fit.

"We've got to stick together," Remus said.

"Remus! Stop being a guidance counselor!"

He grinned. "Sorry. All right, I'm going." He took off and ran into the hole, following James.

Christian looked around at the other girls. "Let's go." And with that all four ran in.

Aidan followed silently.

Peter gulped and followed. _I think I've just peed myself,_ he thought as he ran in.

Inside the hole, some light was coming from the chamber pot room, but the students could see nothing outside of where the light fell.

"Everyone here?" Sirius asked. Eight people responded, "Yes."

"Excellent, then let's find out where we —"

But at that moment, the stone began to move again. However, this time it was moving back into the wall. This meant that the students would be entombed in this — this hole in the wall, whatever it was.

"No! No! That's bad!" Sirius shouted, running over to the stone. By the time he got there, though, the opening was much too narrow for a person to fir though.

The last thing Sirius saw was the door that led from their bedroom to the chamber pot room finally break open. As many men with pointy objects ran into the chamber pot room, the stone slid back into place in the wall. The students were trapped.

The darkness was complete.


	12. Look! A Monkey!

**Look, I'm really sorry about the long wait. My muse (a gnome named Fred) left for a while. He came back, but he's not being very inspirational yet, so God knows where this chapter will go. Ah well.**

**I own Harry Potter.**

**Ha. Yeah right. If I were JKR, would I really be writing a freaking _fanfiction_? No. I think not. I would be too busy… being a billionaire.**

**Oh, just so you know, the chapter title has nothing to do with the chapter. I just couldn't think of anything else.**

**Moving on…**

At first there was silence.

… And then there was Sirius.

"It's really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really —"

"Sirius! Shut up!"

"— really dark in here," he finished.

"No kidding," came the very sarcastic, very ticked off voice of Allie. She was very ticked off because Sirius had just stepped on her foot.

"Okay, first things first," said Remus. "Wand check!"

"Um, problem," said Sirius. "I don't have mine."

"Neither do I," said James.

As the others all responded in turn, something quite unfortunate was discovered. It seemed that everyone had lost his or her wand in the chaos ensuing from the attack. Not one person there still had a wand.

"How are we going to get light?" James asked. Liz could see, of course, as that was one of her powers, but no one else could.

The sound of eight people attempting to hit James over the head suddenly filled the area. James took this as a sign that he was missing something important.

"Prongs, you prat!" came Remus' voice.

"Hey, that was alliteration!" said Christian to no one in particular.

"Christian can create fire, you dimwit!" Remus continued.

Pause.

"This is awkward," said Mary in a loud whisper.

Suddenly, Christian felt a sharp nudge in her side. "Christian!" Liz whispered.

Christian realized that everyone had been waiting for her to create some light, and immediately created a small flame in her palm. The other students all instinctively moved closer to the flickering light. It cast an orange glow over the dirty and overwhelmed faces of the nine.

"Can you make the flame any bigger?" Remus asked. Christian shook her head. "I don't think so."

"How're we gonna get more light?" Sirius inquired… inquisitively. "We need to see where we are for at least a couple of seconds, but we can't really see anything…"

There was a silence as the students contemplated this.

Peter took this opportunity to cough nervously, indicating that he had a notion.

"Do you have an idea, Wormtail?" Remus asked in a bored sort of voice.

"Sort… sort of…" Peter answered.

After a short pause during which everyone waited expectantly for Peter to continue, Remus asked, "Well, what is it?"

"Well… remember before when… when Christian was setting me on fire?"

"Yes."

"Well, then I… you know… I used my power, and…"

"Yes?"

"And there was more fire," Peter said. "You know… when she… um… lit my… power… on fire…"

"That's right!" Sirius exclaimed. "Christian lit Peter's cat fart on fire, and it lit up the entire room, remember?"

Everyone laughed a little bit; well, everyone except Aidan, of course, as he was still sulking… somewhere else.

"So, how are we going to go about this?" Remus asked.

"In my opinion," James began ("No one asked you," Aidan muttered under his breath), "Peter should … you know, let one, and _then_ Christian can make some fire. In the meantime, the rest of us can run away and try to avoid the smell."

Peter turned red, but no one noticed thanks to the very low level of light.

Everyone involved in the discussion murmured some rendition of "Yeah, sounds good," resulting in a unanimous approval.

"All right," Remus said. "You guys ready?"

Peter and Christian both nodded, though Christian looked nauseous. "I think I'm gonna try to… try to kind of _throw_ fire at it or something. I have the burning desire to be as far away from Peter's bodily functions as possible."

"As do we all," Remus said. "So everyone else… keep away, but stay together."

"Will do." The students, including Remus, moved away, taking care to hold on to one another as to not get separated.

Peter decided that the easiest way for him to begin was by a countdown. "Three… two… one…—"

PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT!

Christian raised her arm as if throwing a football. A second later, a bright orange fireball was flying towards the air, illuminating Peter as he ran away. The fire hit the fart and…

_**FOOSH!**_

…exploded. The resulting _KABOOM_ was very loud, and sent a violent tremor through the whole area, sending the students to the floor.

However, they did manage to catch a glimpse of their surroundings. It seemed to be a room, that was certain, made of the same dried mud as the whole city they had just been in. It was fairly narrow — only about twelve feet across. But on the other hand, the room seemed to go one forever in both directions. The students could see only the two walls that formed the passageway, plus the ceiling and the floor. Additionally, there was no sign of the 'door' through which they had come — not even a crack in the wall. It was if the block of stone had never moved.

Then it was dark again, as the fireball traveled down the passage and died out.

"Well, this blows," came Sirius' voice.

Eight concurring murmurs came from the other eight students.

"I think we should —" Remus began, but immediately stopped because of what happened next.

On the floor, two small flames suddenly sprang up. They were about four feet apart and as big as the palm of a hand.

About a foot behind those two flames, two more sprang up. They were identical to the first ones. Two more sprang up behind those ones.

As this event progressed and more and more flames sprang up, the students suddenly realized something. It seemed as if the flames were creating a path. Two rows of flames led down the hallway, dimly illuminating the area.

"… follow that path," Remus finished slowly, staring at the flames.

"Yeah," said Mary.

"Let's go," said Sirius. He started towards the path, but was stopped short when Peter began protesting.

"What?" Peter asked, stuttering slightly. "We're not going on that — that path, are we? Who knows where — who knows where it goes?"

"We don't even know where we are right now, Wormtail, and _'that path'_ is our only possible means of finding out!" Remus said, sounding very impatient.

Peter swallowed. "Well — all right —."

Sirius stepped onto the path with an insouciant "Right-o!" As he did so, the flames flared up for a few seconds, then returned to normal. He looked interestedly at the flames when this happened and remarked, "I think they like me…" When no one else moved, he said matter-of-factly, "Well, come on, then!"

The other students filed slowly onto the path. As each one stepped on it, the flames flared up exactly as they had for Sirius.

Sirius, being in the front, took it upon himself to lead the way. "Let's go," he said as he began walking down the path. The others followed.

After about twenty minutes of scattered "I'm bored!" and "In the name of Merlin, this is taking forever!" and "This was stupid," the students were finally able to see what appeared to be the end of the path. As they approached it, the flames of the path flickered, became very dim, and finally died. Christian immediately created a flame so that they could see, albeit dimly.

It was a dead end.

A wall. Completely blank, with no distinguishing characteristics from the floor or other walls.

The group stood silently for a minute, only half-believing what they saw.

The first to approach the wall was Mary. She examined the mud, her nose a mere half-inch away from the wall, if that. After a tense minute, she proclaimed, "There's something written here!"

There was a small stampede as the other eight students gathered around her.

"But it's in Latin, I think," Mary continued. Indeed, it read, "_Per is ianua, vos reperio quis vos capto vacuus gnarus, quis vos erant accersitus hic pro. Vestri fortuna specto vos. Vos mos genero alio ut fabula. Instruo._"

"Allison!" called Liz. "Can you read this?"

Allie made her way to the front of the throng. "Yeah, sure," she said nonchalantly. She then recited, " '_Through this door, you find what you sought without knowing, what you were called here for. Your fate awaits you. You will write the ending to the story. Prepare_.' "

There was a short silence, then Peter began muttering, "I knew we shouldn't have come this way, what were they thinking, I hate the dark —"

Sirius interrupted with, "Well, that's good…"

"Wait, I'm confused," said James. ("What else is new?" Liz whispered sarcastically, rolling her eyes.) "What's it mean, exactly?" James continued, gesturing to the wall.

"Apparently, if we go through this alleged _door_ —" Allison began.

"— We'll find something we hadn't been looking for —" interjected Christian.

"— And whatever it is, that's why we're here —" Liz broke in.

"— And how we react is going to determine the future, including what happens to us," Mary finished.

The five guys stared at the four girls.

"That was really creepy," Sirius said after a moment.

"What?" the girls all asked at the same time, smiling.

"That."

"Whatever," said Mary.

"Never mind," Sirius, shaking his head.

"Anyway," said Liz. "All right. It talks about a door, but it would help if there actually _was_ a door. What are we gonna do?"

"I think we —" began Remus, but he was cut off by Mary, who exclaimed, "Wait! There's something else — something's being written on the wall!"

And just as she had claimed, spidery writing was forming in lines from left to right on the wall. It read: "Ianua canu exsisto sene tantum per Novem, quod patefacio tantum per Eximo."

Allison immediately translated, "The door can be seen only by the Nine, and opened only by the Key."

"Well, this blows," said Sirius.

"Not really," Liz replied.

"Yeah, it does," Sirius challenged, but Liz ignored him.

"Well, if we're the Nine, we should be able to see it," she said.

"But we can't," said James, trying to be helpful.

"NO, _really_?" Christian said sarcastically.

Even as they spoke, more writing was forming. Allison read it to them as it formed. "The Key can be found where evils once were held. She who discovered that curiosity is an uncontrollable force was the one who set them upon the world, though she did so without meaning to. Fortunately, though, Hope also flew free on that fateful day. All that one must do to open the Box is command it to do so using his or her gift."

"Okay. Well, that was really helpful," Sirius said sarcastically. "Now what do we really have to do?"

"We have to open a box," Remus said thoughtfully.

"And how might we go about doing that?" Sirius asked.

"_With our gift_, it says," Remus continued.

"How does that work?" Sirius asked.

"And what box are we even talking about?" Aidan suddenly broke in. "We have to open a door with a key found in a box, yet we have no key, box or even door. This is pointless. This is folly!"

Suddenly Liz gasped. "No! I know what box they mean!" she burst out. "You guys — you remember when we first came out of the portal or whatever, when we landed in the desert. We found a box — that HAS to be the box they're talking about."

"It sounds a lot like Pandora's Box," Mary said idly. "I mean, the description that was written on the wall." She pointed to the spidery writing. "You know, _evils were once held _in the box, _Hope flew free, curiosity is an uncontrollable force._ All that."

The other eight stared at her for bringing up such a random comparison at such a tense moment. Then, suddenly, a simultaneous realization occurred to the other girls.

"Mary, you're right!" Liz exclaimed.

"It _is _Pandora's Box!" Allie added.

"I can't believe this!" Christian put in.

"Well, maybe we should give it back to him when we're done," Sirius said sardonically.

"No, you idiot, it's _her, _not _him_," Christian said. "Oh Merlin… _duh_… _why_ we didn't realize this before…"

"Wait a moment, I have two questions," Sirius began. "First: who's Pandora?"

"Pandora," Remus began before anyone else could speak, glad that he was finally being helpful, "was a mythological woman. She was given a special Box by the gods, but told not to open it. Her curiosity got the better of her, though, and she opened it. All the evils of the world were in it, so that sucked, but a fairy named Hope also came out of the box." He finished his long-winded explanation and took a deep breath.

Sirius considered this and said, "Ah." Then he said, "And my second question is: where's the box?"

Eight faces suddenly fell. In all the excitement of figuring it out, no one had stopped to think about whether or not the Box was actually in their possession.

"You're not telling me that we don't actually have it?" Sirius said, voice rising.

"Of course not!" Liz said indignantly. "I have it. Duh."

"WHAT?" Christian, Allie, Mary, and Remus all shouted at the same time. "HOW?"

"I picked it up right before those weird German guys took us away," Liz said. "I've had it this whole time, but I never really thought about it."

"WELL, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? GET IT OUT!" Sirius bellowed.

Liz, slightly taken aback at Sirius' display of… loudness, decided to drag it out.. just to make him mad.

"Say the magic word."

"WHAT?"

"The magic word. Say it."

"PLEASE!"

"Say it nicely."

Sirius rolled his eyes and quickly said, "Please."

Liz immediately took the Box out of her robes. It shone with the same unearthly light as it had before.

"Okay! Now hurry up and open it!" Sirius whispered.

"Why are you whispering?" Mary whispered loudly.

"I don't know," Sirius whispered thoughtfully.

"You're weird," Mary whispered back.

"You're one to talk," Sirius whispered his retort.

"Could you two psychos stop it?" Liz asked forcefully.

"Sorry."

"Open it!" Christian urged.

Liz tried, and was unsuccessful. "I can't," she said.

"Oh please," said James. "Let me try." He obviously thought that he would be able to open it, and Liz hadn't been able to because she was _weak_. Well, he was soon about to realize his sad (and kind of funny) mistake. Trying to look cool, James tried to open the box. He attempted to pry it apart for about five minutes, during which his muscles bulged and his face turned red. It was actually quite a comical sight.

Finally, gasping for breath, he handed the Box back, saying, "Can't… do it."

"Yes. We can see that."

"Didn't it say something about using your power to open the Box?" Remus asked.

"Yeah, '_All one must do to open the Box is command it to do so using his or her gift,_" Allie said.

"So we can't open it just by physical force," Remus said. "One of us has got to use our power to open it."

"Whose power'd work, though?" Christian asked.

"Maybe James could — _persuade_ it to open or something," Sirius suggested. Although this suggestion was extraordinarily stupid, it was the only one available at that moment, so they tried.

"Er — I think you should open," James said uncertainly, addressing the Box as if it were alive. The Box gave a little sort of _shudder_ and was still.

"Hey, it moved!" Sirius said happily. "That's some progress, James, keep going."

"Er — um — yes," James said. He cleared his throat. "Open — eh — open sesame?"

The box didn't move.

"Well, yes, someone else's turn now," said James, looking crossly at the Box.

"The writing —" Remus pointed to the wall — "kind of implies that _anyone'_s power will work to open it. So, unless you're an idiot like James, it should open."

"James wasn't subtle enough, so it didn't open," Allie said. "Remember, it said that in the poem, that he was supposed to be subtle?"

"Oh yeah," said James reminiscently. "But I still think someone else should try."

"I'll try," Christian said testily. She proceeded to hold a flame up to the tiny keyhole on the Box. There was a thick, tense silence, and for several seconds that seemed like minutes, nothing happened. Then, very suddenly, the Box sprang open. Christian shrieked and jumped back, startled by the abrupt opening of the Box. She grinned sheepishly when everybody looked at her. "Sorry."

Everyone's attention was immediately brought back to the Box when it began emitting a faint tinkling tune. The Evils and Hope had already been released a long, long time ago, but that didn't mean there wasn't something … ethereal about the Box. The tune was a bit eerie.

Lying on the bare wood bottom of the box was a key.

"That must be it!" Sirius said. He grabbed the Key out of the Box and held it up. Christian's flame was still duskily illuminating the area, so he could see that it was just a plain Key, except that it seemed to be made of wood.

"So now what do we do?" he asked, still examining the Key.

"Open the door, perhaps?" Aidan asked as if it were the most obvious thing in the world and Sirius was an idiot. Which may very well have been true, but that's not the point.

"If there _was_ a door, I would do that," Sirius said angrily, "but there's —"

"Yes there is," Aidan said. "Look."

And there was.

It seemed to be just an outline, a line drawn of the same silver spidery writing that the words had been. But there was also a keyhole.

"Go unlock the door!" Allie said.

Sirius placed the key in the keyhole and turned it. There was an audible click and a _real_ door materialized in the wall and opened.

This, however, did not appear to be a portal to another universe. The students could see what was beyond the door, and it seemed simple enough.

A forest.

Dark, dank, wet and cool were the first adjectives that came to mind. The forest itself gave an air of evil and hopelessness, of malevolent unseen eyes watching every move.

It did seem to have an aura of once being a beautiful place, free of corruption and not so windswept and forgotten as it was now.

"Oh, look at that bird!" Mary said, pointing to a huge bird that had just settled on a branch near the door. It was huge, and at first glance, simple black. Upon a closer look, however, one would discover that it was iridescently purple and green as well.

It gave one loud, raucous call and flew off. Mary immediately ran out the door after it, saying, "No! Wait!"

The three remaining girls exchanged looks and all ran after her, shouting "Mary, wait up!" Remus quickly followed.

Sirius looked at James and said, "Guess that means we're going, mate. Let's." He ran out, James close behind him. Aidan followed and finally Peter, afraid of being left alone, came as well.

What happened next was quite like what had happened in the doorway of the mud house thing when the students had first arrived in the city. After a few minutes of sprinting after the bird, Mary stopped, Liz ran into her, Christian ran into _her_ and it continued like that all the way to Peter.

Mary laughed. Liz asked her why she was so hyper.

The students were in the middle of a tiny clearing. It had started to rain substantially, and the chill in the air had increased to an uncomfortable level. The door out of which they had come was nowhere in sight. Suddenly the realization hit.

They were lost.

"This kind of SUCKS REALLY BAD!" Sirius yelled.

"Sirius, shh, keep your voice down!" Liz said hastily. Merlin knew what was hiding in this forest, and he wasn't there right then to tell them.

Then, from a distance away, the sound of twigs snapping could be heard.

"We're gonna diii-iie. We're gonna diii-iie," Sirius began singing softly.

"No we're not!" Remus said. "No we're not." He said it as if he wasn't really sure himself.

"Remember, the door said that whatever we find in this forest is what we were called here for," Liz whispered.

"And what we do basically determines the future of everything," Allie added.

"I have a bad feeling about this," Sirius whispered.

"Like an actual premonition, or just pessimism?" Mary asked.

"Both."

"Ah."

Meanwhile, Christian was talking to Peter. "Peter, in case we die, I want you to know… I've always sort of liked you," she whispered.

Peter's face lit up. "Really?" he squeaked.

Christian snorted. "No."


	13. The Insanity of Everyone

**I think I know where this will go, sort of. Be happy.**

"I have an idea," said Sirius. "Let's just kill ourselves now and spare whatever's out there the trouble, shall we?"

"Way to be optimistic," said Christian grumpily.

"Yeah, you're right. I guess imminent death shouldn't dampen _anyone_'s spirits."

"I sense anger," said James, attempting to keep the mood light and failing miserably. Everyone started talking, yelling at each other. It grew louder and louder, until —

"SHUT UP!" shouted Mary testily. Everything fell silent.

"That was really loud," said Sirius after a moment.

"So Mary's being loud, what else is new?" said Remus sarcastically. "At least it worked. Now, moving on, what we've got to do now is decide what we're going to do…"

"Well, that cleared that up, Remus," said Allie.

"So we've just got to go round in circles for a while, then," said James. "Good plan, Moony."

Remus rolled his eyes. "You know what I mean… formulate a plan…"

"How can we formulate a plan if we don't know what's happening?" Christian asked, obviously confused.

"I don't actually know."

"Wonderful! This is just perfect!" Aidan said, suddenly voicing his opinion. "You've gone and got yourselves into this mess, and know you can't get yourselves out of it!"

"This is the sound of me _not caring_," said Sirius, looking vaguely towards the sky. Aidan glared at him.

The ominous twig snapping sounds were coming closer.

"We're done for," Wormtail moaned piteously.

"Why don't you go cut the cheese somewhere, Wormtail, as you're not exactly helping," Sirius said sharply. Peter blushed and said nothing more for a while.

_Snap. Snap. Crack. Snap. Crackle. Pop._

Ok, so the ominous noises weren't really those of a name-brand breakfast cereal with really hyper mascots. But they were definitely becoming louder and closer.

_Snap… SNAP… SNAP…_

"It's right outside the clearing, I can tell!" said Sirius.

And indeed, a few seconds later, something entered the clearing…

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" screamed Peter. Everybody else stared at him, wondering why he was screaming at the sight of the fluffy little rabbit that had just hopped into the clearing.

"Sorry," he said a moment later when he realized everyone was staring at him, smirking. "G-got a little p-paranoid there…"

"Nah, really?" Sirius asked.

"Aw, you're so cute!" said Mary to the rabbit, reaching towards it to pet it.

"Why, thank you. I know I am," said Sirius, running his hands through his hair.

"She meant the rabbit, you idiot," Christian snapped, disgusted at his blatant display of narcissism.

"I knew that!" Sirius said unconvincingly.

"Git," said Liz idly.

"Riiiight," Remus said, laughing. "_Any_way…"

"How are we gonna get out of here?" Allie asked. "This forest or planet or whatever, I mean. How are we going to get back to Hogwarts?"

This question brought up a whole stream of others.

"Why are we even here in the first place?"

"Where are we?"

"How long are we gonna be here?"

"What's with the rabbit?"

"Do we have any food? I'm starving."

Everyone rolled his or her eyes as Sirius asked this.

Since nothing was really happening and no one could figure out what to do, Sirius said, "Let me see that box again. Who has it?"

Liz was still holding it and she handed it to him.

Sirius took the box and immediately began inspecting it.

"Sirius — why —" Allie began.

"I just feel like we're missing something," he said without elaborating any further. By this time, everyone's attention had been caught and all were watching Sirius. After a few tense moments, he proclaimed, "AHA!" and pointed to a keyhole — a_nother_ one — hidden in one of the corners on the inside of the Box. "Where's the key?"

"In the Box, Padfoot," Remus said as if he were explaining 2 + 2 4 to a four year old. "You're looking at it."

"Oh. Right."

He picked up the key and fitted it neatly into the hole. What had been a cleverly disguised false bottom sprung open, revealing a slightly tarnished locket and a tiny piece of parchment bearing these words:

_deyort sede brothgi rsiemit ehtne hwyln onepo; nopae wruo ymai_

"Allison, you can read this, right?" James asked.

"Yeah," she replied confidently, and took the paper. Only when she had read through it several times did she develop a crestfallen expression and change her answer. "No."

"What? What's the matter? What's it say?" James asked.

"No," Allison repeated. "I mean I can't read it. I don't even recognize the language."

"What?" Remus said dubiously. "You can't understand it? But then... then that means it's not even a real language!"

"Yeah, I know."

"But then… what's it say?" asked Christian. "What's the locket for, and why would anybody go to the trouble of writing random letters on paper and then locking it in a box?"

"You know what, I don't think we should touch that locket until we figure out what the parchment says," said Liz. "Plus it's getting dark, and I think we're going to be here for a while."

And so it was. The forest, while dark, was eerily quiet; every so often a bush rustled, but the air was void of the normal night noises. Taking heed of this, the students sank down onto the ground, pondering the paper, the way back to Hogwarts, or, in Sirius's case, how he was going to nick food from the kitchens as soon as they got back. _Where are the house-elves when you need them…_ he thought as he drifted off to sleep.

**All right, it was short and pointless (like Dubya), but hey, I finally posted, right? And who can figure out what the parchment says? grins widely as crickets chirp loudly Right…. well it's honestly not that difficult… I took a leaf out of JKR's book, actually. So have fun, wear sunscreen, review, and I'll send you an e-gnome. My gnome muse was throwing a birthday party for my friend's gnome, and a bunch of their gnome friends showed up, and now they won't leave. So please, I beg of you, REVIEW SO I CAN GIVE YOU A GNOME! **


	14. Christian's Dead! Christian's Dead!

Mary was the first to wake in the morning.

She knew that this would make her immutably cranky for the rest of the day but, nonetheless, she could not get back to sleep. In the interest of not waking her sleeping companions, Mary decided to pass the time by exploring around the edge of their makeshift camp.

She stopped by a puddle of clear water for a moment, and tentatively raised her fingers above the water. A twisting, seemingly weightless stream of water followed her hand, amazingly suspended in midair.

After silently marveling at the sight (Mary was easily amused), she stepped beyond the boundaries of the clearing. Her friends remained asleep.

She walked silently for several minutes, traveling in a straight line so she could easily find her way back to her friends. She wondered why the forest was so completely silent – not even a birdcall! – and she didn't notice the shadow following her in the trees. She also didn't notice that she herself did not cast a shadow.

Casually pushing aside some ferns, she stopped dead, mortified.

In front of her was another clearing. This, however, was not a clearing like the one in which her friends were sleeping. This clearing was home to the entrance of a smoky cave, a large fire, and a human head on a stick.

Mary gasped very quietly, put her hand to her mouth, and silently turned, returning swiftly to camp to inform her friends. Her feet made no sound on the dirt floor of the forest. The pine trees rustled menacingly as she passed.

As she approached the camp, she could hear the sounds that meant two things: first, that her friends had awoken; second, that they had noticed her disappearance and were kind of freaking out. She couldn't help herself; she stopped momentarily, hidden behind some tall brush.

"Where IS she?" came Christian's worried voice.

"I'm sure she's fine," Sirius said. "I mean, she's like… Mary. You know, can never resist opening a door that says 'Authorized Personnel Only.' I'm sure she just got bored."

"_WE NEED TO FIND HER!_" came Liz's hysterical voice. This whole 'everyone is this close to death' thing had her pretty stressed out.

"Shh!" Aidan's voice came, clear and unconcerned. "Elizabeth, I can guarantee that there are things in this forest that you do _not_ want to awaken."

"Well, where the hell _is_ she? This is just like her, to go and wander off and get herself abducted or something!"

To this Christian replied, "Liz, you know she can take care of herself."

Aidan added, "I also thought you'd like to know that there is someone standing right behind that bush, watching you and listening to everything you say. Whether or not it is malevolent, I can not tell."

At this statement, the eight students went completely silent. Mary knew they were all looking at the bush Aidan had indicated, and probably deciding whether or not to kill the possibly malevolent someone. At this she stifled a giggle. Then she realized that if she came crashing out of the bush _now_, she would almost certainly die. She almost couldn't hold in her laughter.

She heard Liz say, "Fk."

And Sirius: "We're gonna die."

And Christian: "What if it's Mary?"

And Liz: "Well if it is, then why didn't she come out?"

And Remus: "Mary, if that's you, come out now. If it's not Mary, we're going to destroy you."

With this Mary stepped out of the bushes with a flourish. "Hello everyone," she said, brandishing a large branch like a sword. "Sorry I scared you."

Half of the students breathed a sigh of relief; however, Liz, Aidan, Remus and Allison continued to look at her suspiciously.

"How do we know it's Mary?" asked Aidan suspiciously.

"Exactly what I was thinking," said Allison.

"Ask her something only the real Mary would know," said Liz.

Remus supplied the question. "On the first day of term last year, what did you do that made me want to hex you?"

Mary laughed. "I dyed your hair bright green while you were sleeping. Then I wouldn't tell you how to get it out. You thought it was funny until I told you it was permanent. Then you told me that I was a terrible person. _Then_ you felt bad, even though I thought it was hilarious, and you bought me flowers the next day and got over it. Then –"

Remus said, "OK! OK, enough!" The others were all snickering.

Mary saw a puddle that was reflecting the few stars that were out, and shrieked, "OMIGOD it's _shiny_!" and went over to it.

Thus they knew it was Mary, and all was well.

When they finally managed to drag Mary away from the "shiny," Liz asked her what had happened and why she was so stupid that she would go off in a forest alone in the middle of nowhere and just leave them there to worry and freak out about where she was and what if you had gotten raped?

"You were all sleeping, and I got bored."

Christian rolled her eyes, because it was so Mary.

"Well, you _do_ have a compulsive need to defy authority," said Allison, quoting something that a teacher had once told Mary. "I don't suppose you saw anything of interest?"

"Actually…" said Mary, and she related to them the whole story.

When she was done, eight horrified faces stared back at her.

"A _human_ head?" asked Sirius. "Like, with all the entrails and rubbish?"

Mary looked at him. "Yes. And rubbish."

"Did it have hair?" Liz asked.

"Yeah," Mary answered, "so we know we're not anywhere near that stupid fat idiot who tried to have us killed by gits running round in their knickers."

"They were loincloths," said Christian.

"Well, it's the same thing!"

"What I don't understand," said Remus, "is why he would try to kill us if we were the _chosen_ or whatever. I mean, he sounded all excited about it, like we were going to save his country."

"His troops could have been following the orders of a different, _unauthorized _commander," said Mary, sounding extraordinarily like a general.

While everyone paused to consider this, a deep black shadow glided closer to their camp. It circled around the clearing without stopping.

Meanwhile, Mary had wandered over to Pandora's Box, which was lying a few feet away. She opened it, procured the little piece of parchment with the strange writing that Allison could not read, and wondered.

The silent black shadow had stopped, and was waiting on the edge of the clearing. Had Mary known it was there, she could have reached out and touched it.

Her eyes traveled over the parchment for a few more seconds, and then her eyes lit up.

"EUREKA!" she shrieked. "I'VE GOT IT, I SOLVED IT, I KNOW WHAT IT SAYS!"

Everyone looked over. "What?" came eight weary voices.

"I KNOW WHAT THE PARCHMENT SAYS!" she continued gleefully. There was a short pause, until Sirius asked, "Well, what?"

Mary cleared her throat and began:

"I am your weapon;

Open only when the time is right,

Or be destroyed."

There was more silence at this ominous statement. Then –

"How did you figure it out?" from Christian.

"Well," Mary explained, "I was holding the paper upside down because… well, I don't really know why, but the point is, if you read it backwards it's just English!"

Allison said thoughtfully, "That's why I couldn't read it, then. It's not even a real language."

No one had stopped to think about the actual meaning until Liz piped up, "What the hell is our weapon? A _Box_? That's not gonna help much."

"Well, it _obviously_ has some sort of supernatural power," said Aidan arrogantly.

"_Ob_viously," said Mary in a mocking tone. When he glared at her, she said, "You wanna fight, punk?"

He ignored her and continued. "Our best hope is finding out what that power might be, and why we need it."

Behind him, Mary continued to make faces.

Suddenly a deep black shadow covered Aidan. "Stop it, Mary," he complained.

"I'm not doing anything," she said truthfully. "Where's that shadow coming from? It's too dusky in these woods to cast shadows…" With this statement came the realization that this could be nothing good.

There was a moment of complete stillness, and then everyone moved at once.

"WHERE IS IT?" Christian screamed, while everyone else ran frantically around, trying to see what was going on.

In one swift movement, a shadowy tendril had wreathed Christian's 'face' in deep black smoke. She passed out immediately. This was noticed by everyone present, and only upon looking behind her did the students realize what was holding her.

A huge black demon – substance nothing but a shadowy film – was enveloping Christian within itself, it eyes the only feature on its great black expanse. The eyes were two deep pits of fire, and one felt that he could see the depths of Hell itself when he looked in them.

And this was the thing that was attacking them. So that pretty much sucked.

"DO SOMETHING!" Allison shouted, or maybe it wasn't her, but she couldn't be sure, shoe couldn't tell, there was so much chaos in that small clearing.

And then a few events happened in quick succession.

Sirius had a premonition.

Remus caused a high wind to spring up, blowing everything and everyone around.

Peter … yeah.

Liz, because of her ability to see in the dark, saw through the creature's 7-foot-high exterior right into its inky black perversion of a soul.

A tree fell down, crashing directly on the demon's head. This was due to Remus's wind.

Mary summoned all the water to her she could, and wrapped water around the creature so that it was bound in shimmering, twisting aqua ropes.

And James used his mind-invasive technique to persuade the demon to drop Christian.

And everything stopped.

Christian slid out of the creature's grasp onto the forest floor. She did not stir. Liz, Allison and Mary carried her over to a corner of the clearing, and then returned to face the demon.

It spoke to them, a deep, harsh, guttural noise. "Let me go."

"No." It was Liz who spoke. "No, we will not." And she spoke its true name, which she had found when she saw inside of it, and it was forced to succumb to her will, and the will of those around her.

"Tell us," Allison commanded, "Tell us who you are and what you have done."

The demon was unable to resist, since its true name had been spoken. And so it answered, "My name in the Common Tongue is Avarice. I was coming to spread my influence in Noæh. I had not been previously able to reach it."

"Continue."

The demon sighed, and it was the sound of a tree crashing in the forest. "I infiltrated Bythaes. He was ridiculously easy to manipulate. I knew you Nine would be coming. I knew you would fight against me. It was in the Prophecies. So I tried to kill you. Or, rather, Bythaes did, under my… persuasion." It laughed, and it was the sound of a house burning down.

"And the head on a stick?"

"I possessed the hermit who lived in that cave. I made him tell me if any strangers entered the wood. After I was done with him I disposed of him." It struggled uselessly against its watery bonds.

"How can we destroy you?"

It laughed again, and it was the sound of a chainsaw cutting into the sinews of an innocent's throat. "I cannot be destroyed. Only contained. And eventually, I will escape. I always escape."

"Well," said James, getting impatient, "how can we 'contain' you, then?"

When this question was asked, Avarice struggled visibly against his chains. This seemed to be the single question he did not want to answer.

Mary stepped up and commanded, "_ANSWER_ THE _QUESTION_!"

The demon looked at her, surprised and a little frightened. "Do I know you from somewhere?"

"No. NOW _ANSWER_!" At this direct command, the demon couldn't not answer.

"You can not order me to return to the Box. You have almost no power over it. You do have the Box, I see." It laughed again, and the students thought they could hear the screams of men and women being burned alive. "After Hope escaped, she shut the Box. A very tiny piece of Jealousy was caught in it, and there is has remained ever since."

"How may we find it?"

"It lies there, on the interior."

Mary looked at the Box, for she was the one holding it. "You mean this little paint stain?" she asked, pointing.

The demon smiled horribly and said, "That is not paint. But yes. That is Jealousy. Only he can contain me. He will drag me into the Box with him, because he goes out of his way to make others miserable, even if it means harm to himself." It stopped smiling and said, "Now you think you will release him so that he takes me in."

Sirius said, "Yes. Shut up."

The demon looked at him, and Sirius shivered a little bit.

"Well," it said smugly, "the only way you might do that is to learn Jealousy's true name, as you have learned mine. And that should not be too easy." He obviously thought he had some sort of leverage over them, but he did not realize that it would be quite simple.

Turning away from the demon, Allison spoke. She spoke it the disgusting, abrasive tongue of demons, even though it burned her throat and nose and made her eyes water. She summoned Jealousy, and a green, shapeshifting smoky form drifted out. It was much smaller than Avarice, perhaps the size of her head. Mary did not bind it; she knew that their mission could not be completed if the demon were not free to move. Rather, they would bind it with words.

"_We demand your services_," said Allison in the same burning language.

Jealousy did not answer immediately; rather, it looked slowly round the clearing, and saw Avarice. "So this is where you have been, my comrade," it said in a strange, dry, crackling voice. "Bound up here, in the Universe… at least you, unlike I, were able to feel the breath of wind on your back… that is not fair, my greedy friend, and I will make it just…"

"You will return to the Box," said Liz.

Jealousy nodded its green head, which it had just formed out of smoke. "I have accepted that as my eternal fate… I, however, shall not be returning alone… I will take this one with me…" And with that, it streaked across the clearing to Avarice, who, with a sudden burst of fury, broke free of his bonds.

"_You cannot control me any longer!"_ it shouted. "_I WILL NOT RETURN TO THE BOX!"_ But Jealousy caught him, and so began an almost-but-not-quite-epic battle.

At this moment, several events happened simultaneously.

Remus caused a wind to blow the demons closer to the Box, which was lying open on the ground.

Liz saw into Jealousy, and discovered its true name.

Mary caused a glistening dome of water to form around the clearing so that the demons' fight would be confined to the clearing.

Peter… yeah.

Sirius had _another _premonition, and, realizing that this wasn't helping, began to throw things at the struggling demons.

James achieved subtlety, and minute by minute – second by second – he moved the demons a little bit closer to the Box.

Aidan, invisible, dragged Christian to a spot where she was in less danger. He then left her side to help Sirius. Because of his invisibility, he was able to get closer and therefore inflict more damage.

Christian woke up, but was immediately hit in the head by one of Sirius's projectile missiles, and she passed out again.

Allison screamed in the demon language, "_RETURN NOW TO THAT WHENCE YOU CAME!_" over the howling wind that had just begun to blow.

James, who could (conveniently) understand this statement because of the influence he was exerting over the demons (the whole mind-connection thing), shouted "WHO SAYS '_WHENCE_'?" but no one heard him.

At Allison's words, there was a blinding flash of light and a beam of – well, they weren't really sure what it was – a complete blackness – the opposite of light, it seemed – shot out of the box and pinpointed itself on the tussling demons. It expanded to envelop the demons wholly in itself, and for a moment, there was no sound at all.

Then, suddenly, there was a **BOOMY SOUND **and noise returned even louder than it had been, nearly causing the students' ears to bleed.

With a last, dying scream of rage, the demons were sucked into the box Jumanji-style and it closed with a neat _snap_.

And then there was silence.

"That was quick," remarked Sirius after a couple of minutes.

The students were dirty and beat up and shaky and breathless, and they wanted to go home, and they weren't even sure what had just _happened_, and Christian was unconscious, and they smelled like death. Yes, death. Not like decaying bodies. Like death.

Very slowly, Mary unraveled her web of water. Her whole body ached, and she just wanted to sleep. Mary had this in common with every other person there save Christian, who couldn't exactly feel emotion seeing as she was knocked out. Which reminded Liz that Christian was knocked out, and she beckoned Mary and Allison to help her make Christian alive.

"Is she dead?" asked Allison quietly, so that the others could not hear.

"She's not dead," answered Liz. "She's only _mostly_ dead."

"And," Mary contributed, "there is a significant difference between _mostly_ dead and _all_ dead."

"Well," Allison inquired, "how can we make her alive?"

"I know how," said Mary with her trademark evil smile. She leaned down and whispered, "Christian. Christian, look, it's our German teacher!"

At these words, Christian sat up so quickly that she smacked her face off Liz's, because Liz was holding up a mirror to Christian's nose to see if she was still alive.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!" Christian shrieked. "WHERE? HIDE!"

Their German teacher was exceptionally creepy. Or, as the Germans say, he was a _Kletterpflanze_. (Yes, that is a real word.)

Liz and Allison and Mary were laughing at Christian, who then realized that they were lying, But she was grateful to them for making her alive, so she didn't complain. She just sighed in relief.

"I wanna go home," James wailed suddenly.

"Well, we have no means of doing that, so you may as well let that idea go," snapped Aidan.

There was a moment of silence while the nine digested the fact that they were going to die in the middle of freaking nowhere.

"Wait!" said Sirius unexpectedly. "I think I know what to do!"

"This is bound to be stupid," said Remus, "but go ahead."

"I had a premonition," said Sirius. "OK, you know that, like, hermit chap in the woods that the great smoky git was telling us about?"

Nods. Nods all around.

"Well, we have to go there," explained Sirius. "To his cave."

"Why?"

"Because I _saw_ it," said Sirius as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, rolling his eyes. "We just _do_."

"I vote that we don't," said Aidan at once.

"I vote that we do," said Mary immediately after him.

"I second," said Christian.

"We have no better plan. I third," added Remus.

"Let's put it to a vote. All in favor of going raise your hand," said Mary. Everyone except Aidan raised his or her hand. Aidan is annoying.

"Mary, you found it before," said Sirius, looking pleased that he had actually helped. "Lead the way, Sergeant. Oh yeah, and I had another premonition after that. I saw us in Hogwarts!"

"_Hogwarts_? Are you sure?"

He nodded excitedly, and this improved the morale of the troops more than you could ever know.

**Future Events: Back to Hogwarts? We shall see…**

**Also, an interesting conversation about pants.**

**I love torturing my characters.**


	15. Bored & Bloodthirsty

**Authors' Notes: no, that is not a typo. My friend aquaeyes6351 is collaborating with me on this chapter because we are bored. She has some excellent fics and is on my favorites list for easy access. She also likes sparkles, as does the other (excellent) author on my favorites list. Huzzah!**

"Are we there yet?" complained Sirius loudly.

"No. Shut up."

Like Sirius, the other students were becoming increasingly irritated with each other, and increasingly entangled in the surrounding brush. However, unlike Sirius, none of them was voicing his opinion. Except Aidan, because he's annoying.

"How long is this going to take?" Aidan inquired irately. God, he's so annoying!

"Your mom," retorted Christian cleverly.

"As long as it takes," said James, who obviously believed he was also being clever.

"Shut up, James," Mary snapped, "we'll be there soon."

"Oh good," said Liz, interrupting the dispute, "this must be it!" for indeed, they had arrived at their destination.

"You mean the rock with the Halloween decorations?" asked Sirius, referencing the quaint skulls-on-sticks theme.

"Somehow I find myself doubting that it's Halloween in this realm," said Remus ominously.

"Well aren't you a right little ray of sunshine, Moony," James said. "Ha ha, get it? _Moon_y… _sun_shine… like moon and – "

"James, shut up!"

"Um, guys?" Liz asked, clearly intent upon taking action. But, of course, no one paid attention, because they were too busy being stupid.

"Hey, you guys, I think – " she began, but again no one listened, just bickered.

"EVERYBODY SHUT UP!"

They did.

"Why don't we go knock or something?" she suggested innocently. "Sirius, what did you see at this point in your premonition?"

Sirius shrugged cheerfully. "Didn't see nothing after this."

Christian, Liz and Mary all gave simultaneous convulsive twitches and started yelling at Sirius.

"THAT WAS A DOUBLE NEGATIVE, YOU IDIOT!"

"ARE YOU _TRYING_ TO MAKE MY HEAD EXPLODE?"

"ARE YOU RETARDED?"

"HAS SEVEN YEARS OF GRAMMATICAL INSTRUCTION TAUGHT YOU _NOTHING_!"

"CAN WE MOVE _ON_, PLEASE?" Aidan squawked, interrupting the girls' onslaught.

Sirius, who looked extremely hassled, got up from the ground and brushed the dirt and blood off himself. He shook his head and then said, "I didn't see – _anything_ – after that part. I just saw us walking round the forest then standing here."

Mary said, "Great. So we all die."

"But let's try and talk to him," Sirius continued, picking up a rock and tossing it in his hand. "I'm sure he'll be friendly!"

Remus cast a darkly significant look at the skulls.

"Yes, nothing says friendly quite like _hermit_," said Christian dryly.

"Git," Mary said idly.

"Well, Sirius, you were so keen on talking to the bloke, why don't you go knocking round his door. We'll just wait back here," suggested James, sidling backwards. He tripped over a rock and knocked aside Sirius, who accidentally flung the rock towards the cave.

In that moment, an old, wizened man emerged from the dark cave entrance. He was immediately hit in the face by Sirius's projectile rock.

"Oof!"

"Sirius, you idiot!" Mary said, running over to the hermit to help him. She was immediately joined by all of the girls except Peter. "You killed him!"

"Well," Sirius said crossly, "just because he hit his face off my rock – "

The old man croaked, "I'm not dead yet!"

Liz stepped over a skull to approach Sirius and

SLAP.

"OW!" Sirius said, and he lost his balance on James's prostate form and ran into one of the skull shish kebabs. It fell. Not only, however, did this one skull fall. Instead, it knocked over the next skull, which knocked over the next skull, and – yeah. It was bad, and strongly reminiscent of dominoes. Soon every skull in the place was on the ground, and Sirius just stood there looking stupid.

The old man looked at his yard, aghast. He turned to face the students, and stared at them for a tense second during which no one moved. He did not react to Christian's missing face. Then his expression relaxed into a weary but slightly amused one and he said, "Why don't you come into my house before you destroy the rest of my yard? Not that there's much left…" he said, referring to the one remaining vertical skull stick thing.

Unfortunately, however, Peter was there.

Peter emitted, shall we say, an audible gastric movement, and the last upright skull fell over with a loud _clunk_ accompanied by a nauseating odor. He stared at the others through wide eyes.

The old man sighed and shook his head, but not unkindly. "Just come inside, then." Under his breath he whispered, "Fewer things to break in there." He pivoted on the spot and reentered his cave.

The students exchanged glances with each other, and then hesitantly filed into the cave after him.

It soon became clear that the old man was a permanent resident of the cave. The area had all the unmistakable signs of the residence of a single person: it was cluttered and crude, but clean as far as dirt floors go. Clay pots lined the shelves carved into the rock face. In sharp contrast to the rough appearance, long blue-and-white plaid curtains adorned the wall; however, they didn't seem to cover a window or a doorway, just a small area of the rock face.

The man invited them to sit with a wave of his hand. The students perched themselves on the roughly hewn wooden benches around a square table of the same material while be bustled around making tea.

"I can almost smell the tension in the air," Liz whispered to the other girls sitting around her.

"That's not tension, that's Peter," Mary whispered back, and Christian stifled a giggle.

The old man raised an eyebrow at them. They stared back, apprehensive. He returned to his tea-making.

Finally Remus broke the silence. "We'd like to ask you a few questions, if it's all right," he said. The old man stopped making tea but did not turn around. After several seconds of silence, Remus, unsure whether or not the man had heard him, began again. "Um, we'd – "

The man cut him off. "I heard you the first time," he said sharply. Then he sighed, relenting. "I know who you are." (The students exchanged uneasy glances.) "I may know why you have come. I, also, would like to ask _you_ some things." He turned around, holding a teapot. "But first let us have a drink. I find there is nothing quite so relaxing a good hot cup of tea. Chamomile, anyone?" He passed around ten earthenware mugs without handles, retaining one for himself, and poured a liberal amount of the steaming liquid into each.

Sirius, James and Peter immediately started into theirs, but the others refrained. The old man looked at them questioningly. "Why do you not drink?" He paused, then after a moment comprehended their attitude and chuckled. "I understand. You fear that I have put something unseemly into the drink. I understand," he said with a melodramatic look of deepest sadness, "and I will not take offense. I assure you, however, that I have put nothing into your tea that should not be there. Would be a waste of good tea," and with that, picked up his own mug and gulped down a mouthful. Aidan shrugged and drank, and after a moment the others followed his precedent.

As Sirius set his mug back down, he was entranced by the patterns of smoke unfurling from the last dregs of tea. . . .It seemed to him that two identical swirls were traveling through the air, intertwining themselves endlessly in and around the other swirls . . .

He shook his head to clear his mind. Clairvoyant or not, he should not be looking for meaning where there was none.

He became aware that everyone was watching him.

"You all right there, Padfoot?" James asked when he saw Sirius come to.

"Yeah, just zoned out… sorry…"

"Well," said the old man. "Now that everyone is present mentally as well as physically" (the students sniggered) "we can discuss more important matters… you are, of course, the Nine."

There was an intensification of attention all around the table.

"My first question is, of course, how you all came to be here." He looked around at each face, each visage teeming with fatigue and caution and fear. "If you would be so kind."

There was a pause, a very long pause, during which everyone tried to start but no one could figure out where to begin.

Finally Allie spoke. "It started with that stupid spell," she said, unable to keep the note of bitterness out of her voice. The old man raised his eyebrows but said nothing. She continued, "We made a bet with each other. We're all friends, see, and…" her voice trailed off as she thought about how unimaginably long ago that all seemed.

Christian picked up for her. "The blokes over here told us that being a guy was worse than being a girl, and we disagreed, so the eight of us agreed to all switch genders for a day."

"Eight? But unless I am much mistaken – which I am not – there are nine of you here," the old man said.

"Well, there are, but Aidan here was uninvited," said Sirius, shooting Aidan a filthy look.

"Enough," said Liz, quelling any argument that may have started. "When we were changing back, Peter messed up the spell for Christian, and her face… disappeared. _Then _Mary found out that she could actually go _into_ Christian's face, and she brought back some seaweed…" and she recounted the rest of the tale to the old man, albeit in a much abridged version.

When she was done, the old man sat in silence for several minutes as if meditating. He then pronounced, "Hmm," and then "All right, you may ask me questions now."

The following cacophony sounded a bit like this:

Christian: Who _are_ you?

Mary: Where _are_ we?

Liz: Can you help us get home?

Sirius: I know you can, I saw it!

Remus: What about what the demon said?

James: Where are we?

Mary: I just said that, you idiot.

James: (feels bad about himself) Oh.

Allison: How do you know who we are?

Aidan: (cranky look)

And then everyone breathed again.

The old man merely smiled while taking this in. "First, you asked who I am. Well," he said, leaning back on the bench a little bit, "I suppose I'm Anteros, aren't I?"

"If you say so," James said.

Meanwhile, Liz and Mary were thinking hard. (Yes, Mary is capable of this feat.)

"I know I've heard that name before," said Liz.

"Same," said Mary. "I think it was in World Mythology."

"But I just can't remember…" Liz muttered.

"It's all right, it doesn't matter now," said Mary. "We'll figure it out later."

"Secondly," said the old man, continuing, "I believe you asked where you are… well, this is the _Silva von Nonreverto Diligo_."

Everyone looked to Allie.

"It's Latin," she said immediately. "The Forest of… the Forest of… Unrequited Love?"

Anteros smiled. "Indeed it is."

Suddenly Mary realized something. "That's it!" she exclaimed. "That's it, Anteros is the Greek god of unrequited love!" Then, realizing what she had just said, her jaw dropped. "You…you're a god!" she said to Anteros.

"Indeed I am," he replied, still smiling complacently.

The looks of awe from the students served only to amuse Anteros.

"And you wondered why my forest is so desolate," he said with the hint of a smile. "The dregs of love and hate remain here always…"

"But doesn't it get lonely?" asked Allison.

"More than you know," answered Anteros, and for the first time he seemed sad.

"Thirdly you asked if I could help get you home. And my answer is: Certainly."

"Oh thank God." Liz slumped back in her chair, hand over her eyes. Everyone else reacted in a similar manner: they were going home, they were going home, it was all going to be over soon!

"However, I will require payment."

"Anything!" said Allison. "We just want to get home!"

"Fourth, I believe you asked about the demon," Anteros said, looking at Remus, who nodded. "I'll assume he told you that he killed the hermit who lived here." Remus nodded his assent. "Yes, he killed a man some time ago…" Anteros's voice drifted off. "But it was not me, it was not even a real person, it was merely a form of protection I had to use for a while… it is a highly unpleasant matter, let us delve no deeper into it."

Understanding the topic to be closed, the students waited for the answer to their next question.

"Lastly you asked how I knew your identity."

The Nine waited with baited breath.

"A long time ago, shortly after the universe was created – "

"By Kronos?" interrupted Liz, unable to contain herself. She was gonna find out how the universe began! How excit –

"Not exactly," said Anteros with another smile, effectively bursting her happy bubble. "It is much more complicated than that, mortals have simply simplified it for convenience. . . .Were I to explain the creation of the universe, you would be here for millennia and still you could not understand. Let us move on."

Liz agreed, though she was disappointed.

"Anyway, shortly after the universe was created, Hermes came to me with a message bearing news of you. Very few have ever come this way, and only those who are meant to stumble upon this realm do so. I have been waiting… been waiting for a very long time, and finally you are come. That, companions, is how I knew who you were."

Silence.

"So can we go home now?" Sirius asked in a small voice.

Anteros, still smiling, looked at him. "Certainly. However, as I said, there must be a sacrifice."

This could not be good.

"What… what _kind_ of sacrifice, exactly?" asked Allison.

"Well, as much as I hate to tell you this," said Anteros, whose grin proclaimed exactly the opposite, "a blood sacrifice is required."

"Eh… how… how _much_ blood?" asked Sirius in a brave attempt at a confident voice.

"One of the Nine," said Anteros. "Alas, one of your own must be left behind forever. . . .But worry not; his or her death will be completely painless."

"Oh my God," said Liz, again putting her hand over her eyes. She felt her body go numb as the full impact of what was about to transpire hit her. The other eight experienced the exact same sensation.

"We can't _leave her behind!_" protested Christian.

"But we didn't _choose _to come here! That's not fair!" argued Mary. "That's not right!"

"But you _did_ choose," said Anteros. "Every decision you made has led you to this point. And to continue, you must choose one of yourselves to leave behind. I will leave you alone for exactly five of your minutes while you decide." He exited the cave, presumably for a walk in the forest.

Christian stood up. "We have to draw straws. There's no other way." Even as she said it, she couldn't believe that she was saying it, couldn't believe that she was accepting it. Later she would realize that she was in shock.

There was a small pile of sticks in the corner, probably meant for kindling. Aidan stalked over and proceeded to break off nine pieces of wood, one shorter than the rest. He arranged them in his hand so that they all looked the same length.

"I will take the last stick that is left," he said. Then he held out his hand so the others could choose.

There was nothing else to do. There was to be one other way out of the situation. The only possible plan was to mark one of the Nine as dead.

Gone.

Each student chose a twig.

It was immediately evident from the look on Allison's face that she had received the short stick.

Liz and Christian began crying quietly. Mary looked as if she had just been torn in half. The boys looked like they, too, might break down in tears.

"Allie, I'm so sorry," said Liz quietly through her tears.

Allie, however, held her head high. "Everyone has to make sacrifices," she said softly. "Don't be sad, I know we'll see each other again someday, even if it's not in the life or whatever. It's okay."

And everyone suddenly realized that she was right, and that everyone has a time to go, and that maybe, just maybe, this was Allie's.

Anteros walked back into the cave. "Have you chosen, then?"

Every single person in the cave shot him the dirtiest, filthiest, most hateful look they could.

"I see you have. Who is to go?"

In response, Allison looked up.

"Ah," he said. "Outside, then." Liz, Mary and Christian started to move towards the door to follow, but Anteros stopped them. "No, you stay here," he said. He handed Allison a small clay pot and instructed her to go to the clearing "on the other side of the pines." Following her outside, he said, "Back in a minute."

They heard nothing.

The Nine – now reduced to Eight – sat in silence until he returned several minutes later, toting the small clay jar Allison had been carrying.

"Now then," he said, rubbing his hands together, "you lot. To where are you returning?"

"Hogwarts," mumbled someone forlornly.

"Right." He removed the lid of the clay pot and dipped his finger into the liquid inside. He then proceeded to draw back one of the curtains, revealing a blank rock wall. He wrote some words in a strange, curling language no one recognized (they thought, with a stab of pain, that Allison would have known) and drew the curtain back over the wall.

When he pulled the curtain back again with a flourish, the Eight were utterly unsurprised to see a doorway in the wall.

"Hogwarts awaits you," he cried dramatically. "Fare thee well!" and he waited for them to step through.

With a collective sigh of sadness, the Eight trouped through the doorway.

They found themselves in a _very_ familiar place.

They were in Hogwarts.

"Oh my God," said the three girls simultaneously. Sirius and James looked like they might cry with joy. The relief was unbelievable.

They were home!

The feeling was…well, overwhelming is an understatement. It was _phenomenal_… but of course, dampened by the loss of one of their companions.

It was not until Remus said, "Wait… something's wrong," on the way to their common room that the feeling of elation began to disappear.

"What, Remus?" Mary asked. "Can it wait? I'm exhausted."

The others agreed with her.

"No, it can't," said Remus. "We're not back."

"_WHAT?_" thundered Mary. "What do you _mean_ we're _not back_?"

"We're not back," he repeated. "Look at the plaque." With a trembling hand he pointed to a golden award on the wall.

**IN HONOR OF THE MERITORIOUS  
****HEADMASTER AT HOGWARTS SCHOOL OF WITCHCRAFT AND WIZARDRY  
****FOR SERVICES TO THE SCHOOL,  
****THE BOARD OF GOVERNORS  
****RECOGNIZES ALBUS W.B.P. DUMBLEDORE  
****SIGNED, **

And then there were twelve signatures, followed by a date some _twenty-five years_ after our heroes had attended school.

"Maybe it's just a typo," whispered Christian almost hysterically. "It _has_ to be a typo. Right?"

They were_ in the wrong time_.

"AAAAAAAAAAHHHH!" screamed James. "First that, then this! WHEN CAN WE GO HOME?"

"THAT IDIOT GOD SENT US TO HOGWARTS IN THE _FUTURE_!" shouted Mary. "I AM _SO_ TURNING BUDDHIST!"

"Shh!" Liz said suddenly. "Someone's coming! Hide!"

And without another word, all of the students except Mary hid, because Mary was too angry to do anything but stand there and seethe. Even through her delirious anger, she could hear footsteps, but she paid them no attention.

"Mary, you idiot!" Christian hissed from the statue behind which she was hiding. "What are you doing? Hide!"

But it was too late.

As two identical red-headed figures rounded the corner, Mary realized the situation… but there was no time to hide, and she was standing right next to the corner.

She collided with the two identical red-headed figures, or, rather, they collided with her; but the result was the same; she was mad so she shoved them away.

"Whoa! Calm down!" said one.

"Are you all right?" inquired the other.

"I'm fine," said Mary. "Get _out_ of my _way_ before I castrate you."

In the shadows, Liz and Christian sniggered quietly. Even with all they had been through, they could not help but laugh at Mary's anger management problems.

The twins exchanged looks, probably because of her apparent anger, and then smiled as if planning something.

"It's a little late to be out wandering around, isn't it?" said one.

"That it is, Fred," said the other.

"Well, let's help this young lady," they said in unison, and in a flash, each of them had picked up one of her elbows and away they went down the hall, Mary struggling for freedom, and yelling loudly as well.

"Oh God!" said Christian. "They've kidnapped her!" and away she and Liz went down the hall to rescue their friend.

The boys followed, as was only pertinent in such a situation.

As they traveled down the hall, Sirius whispered, "This is gonna be one hell of a ride."

Almost as if he could see the future.

Almost.

**Future Events: yay, the twins!**

**Tune in next time, folks!**


End file.
